St. Peters Dome rising above the January 13 Bucher Creek debris flow that swept across I-84, killing one person (ODOT)
It seems a world away as we enter yet another summer drought, with record-breaking heat waves and an early wildfire season in WyEast country. Yet, just a few months ago, on January 13th, the tragic story of a Warrendale Resident being swept away in her car by a winter debris flow in the Columbia Gorge filled our local news. The event closed a 10-mile section of I-84 from Ainsworth State Park to Tanner Creek and the area was evacuated after the National Weather Service issued a flash flood warning.
Some of the local media coverage also connected the dots, reporting on the long history of dangerous debris flows in this part of the Gorge. This was not a freak tragedy, but rather, a completely predictable event. The well-known hazard zone stretches from Ainsworth State Park on the west to Yeon State Park, five miles to the east, encompassing the hamlets of Dodson and Warrendale in its path. While the steep walls throughout the Gorge are infamous for producing rockfall and landslides, this stretch is notoriously active. Why?
Slip-sliding away…
Geoscientists don’t have a particular name for this geologically active area, but the unifying feature is a near-vertical wall that I will call the Nesmith Escarpment for the purpose of this article. The name that comes from Nesmith Point, which has the distinction of being the tallest feature on the Gorge rim, rising nearly 4,000 feet from the banks of Columbia River. The Nesmith Escarpment was largely created by the ancient, catastrophic Missoula Floods that shaped much of what we know as the Columbia River Gorge during the last ice, more than 13,000 years ago. These floods repeatedly scoured the Gorge with torrents hundreds of feet deep, often enough to overtop today’s Crown Point and Rowena Plateau.
Tumalt Creek is the largest of the volatile streams that flow from the towering, over-steepened Gorge walls of the Nesmith Escarpment(ODOT)
As the massive Missoula Floods cut into the slopes below Nesmith Point, the over-steepened terrain began to collapse into the river. It’s a process that continues to this day, gradually expanding the escarpment and leaving behind sheer basalt towers of resistant bedrock along the lower slopes. Of these, St. Peters Dome is the most prominent, along with Rock of Ages and Katanai Rock (the informal name for the impressive monolith that rises just east of St. Peters Dome).
The headwaters of Tumalt Creek flow from the highest walls of the Nesmith Escarpment, where the red, volcanic layers of the Nesmith Volcano that rests on the Gorge rim have been exposed by erosion (ODOT)
Adding to the geologic uniqueness of the Nesmith Escarpment is Nesmith Point, itself. Located at the top of the escarpment, the familiar layer-cake stack of basalt flows that make up so much of the Gorge geology gives way at Nesmith Point to bright red and yellow layers of clay and cinders that reveal the uppermost part of the escarpment to be the remains of a volcano. The northern half of the volcano has been torn away over the millennia by the growing escarpment, leaving a visible cross-section of the volcanic dome. The surviving, southern half of the Nesmith volcano is gently sloping, like other dome volcanoes that line the Oregon side of the Gorge (the familiar peaks of Larch Mountain and Mount Defiance among them).
The result of all this erosion is a 3-mile-long amphitheater of collapsing layers of volcanic debris and basalt walls resting uncomfortably and over-steepened upon ancient sediments at the base of the cliffs that make for a slippery, unstable foundation. Rain, winter freezes and gravity will therefore continue to chip away at the escarpment for millennia.
Over the many centuries since the Missoula Floods, this relentless erosion has built a huge apron of what geoscientists call an “alluvial fan” at the base of the Nesmith Escarpment. This name describes the flood debris that accumulates where canyon streams prone to flash-flooding suddenly reach a valley floor, slowing and depositing debris over time. The resulting layers typically form a broad, gently sloped wedge shaped like a fan. For the purpose of this article, the fan at the base of the Nesmith Escarpment will be referred to as the Nesmith Fan.
(Source: State of Wyoming)
(Source: City of Scottsdale)
One of the defining features of an alluvial fan is the erratic, constantly shifting course of the streams that create them. Because of their shallow slope and the accumulation of debris, these streams continually change course as they spread their loads of rock and gravel on the fan.
If the Nesmith Escarpment and debris fan were located in a desert environment, these defining features would be exposed and easy to see. But in the forested western Gorge, the dense rainforest vegetation quickly covers debris flows with new growth, often within five or ten years, making it hard to recognize how active the geology really is. It’s therefore easy to understand why settlements like Dodson and Warrendale were built upon on the Nesmith Fan, where the fertile ground and gentle terrain were friendly to farming and home sites. The spectacular cliffs of the Nesmith Escarpment simply provided a beautiful backdrop for these communities. Yet, it’s also an increasingly hazardous place for anyone to live.
The image below shows the Nesmith Escarpment and debris fan in a way that wasn’t possible until LIDAR technology was developed. LIDAR allows highly detailed images of topography even in areas like the Gorge, where dense forests cover the terrain. The LIDAR view shows the steep walls of the escarpment in stark relief, including the hundreds of steep ravines that have formed along the escarpment.
Lidar view of the Nesmith Escarpment and debris fan
The LIDAR view also reveals the alluvial deposits that make up the Nesmith Fan to be a series of hundreds (or even thousands) of overlapping debris flows from the roughly dozen streams that flow from the Nesmith Escarpment, each helping to gradually build the enormous alluvial fan. The wrinkled surface of the fan reveals the hundreds of flood channels that have developed over the millennia as countless debris flows have swept down from the cliffs above.
This view (looking east toward Dodson from Ainsworth State Park) shows the vulnerability of I-84 and the Union Pacific Railroad where they cross the 3-mile-wide expanse of the Nesmith Fan. The 2021 debris flows and flooding damage to the Ainsworth interchange can be seen at the center of the photo, where the interstate was temporary closed by the event (ODOT)
During the very wet winter of 1996, a series of major debris flow roared down from the Nesmith Escarpment, sweeping cars off I-84 and closing the freeway for several days. A train on the Union Pacific line was knocked off its tracks and many home were damaged.
During the event, debris from Leavens Creek, near St. Peters Dome, swept toward the Dodson area, eventually engulfing the Royse house, which was located near the Ainsworth interchange. The scene was shocking, burying the home in debris that rose to the second floor and destroying outbuildings on the Royse farm. You can read Carol Royse’s riveting account of the event on Portland State researcher Kenneth Cruikshank’s excellent web page describing the 1996 debris flows here.
The Royse House in Dodson (with St. Peters Dome beyond) after a series of debris flows on Leavens Creek engulfed the structure in 1996 (The Oregonian)
The Royse home stood half-buried and visible from the freeway for many years, becoming a prominent reminder of the power of the Gorge. By the mid-2000s, a new forest of Red alder and Cottonwood had already enveloped the debris path and the Royse home, eventually obscuring it from view until the Eagle Creek Fire destroyed both the structure and newly established forest in 2017.
The more recent debris flows in January of this year struck some of the same spots that were impacted in the 1996 and 2001 events. The Tumalt Creek drainage was once again very active, sending debris onto I-84 and closing the freeway. To the west, the Leavens and Bucher creek drainages also sent debris onto the highway and the site of the former Royse home.
As jarring as these changes are to us, this cycle of destruction, rebirth and more destruction has unfolded hundreds of times on the Nesmith Fan. It’s simply part of the ongoing evolution of the landscape.
How do they start?
Debris flows are a mud and rock version of an snow avalanche. They typically begin with oversaturated soils on steep terrain that suddenly liquifies from its own weight. Once it begins to move, the flow can incorporate still more oversaturated soil as it gathers speed, just as a snow avalanche triggers downslope snow to move. The steepness of the terrain is a key factor in how fast a debris flow can move, and on very steep slopes they can reach as much as 100 miles per hour, though they typically slow as the debris reaches the base of the slope and spreads out to form alluvial fans.
These towering twin cascades where Bucher Creek originates along the Nesmith Escarpment rival Multnomah Falls in height. The impossibly steep terrain here is the source of both the debris and sudden flash floods that have helped build the Nesmith Fan, far below (ODOT)
A heavy rain event can also trigger a debris flow by creating stream flooding that erodes and undermines stream banks, causing debris to slide from canyon walls. This form of debris flow is common in the larger canyons in the Columbia Gorge, but less so on the Nesmith Escarpment, where most of the streams are small and only flow seasonally. Here, it’s the steepness of the slopes and the unstable geology that makes the area so prone to debris flows.
Debris flows are different from landslides. A debris flow is typically quite liquid and fast moving, like cake batter being poured into pan. Landslides are typically slow, with a large mass sliding as a whole, like an omelet sliding from a skillet onto a plate. In the Gorge, landslides are common and mostly occur where the underlying geology is oversaturated and allows the overlying terrain to move. The upper walls of the Nesmith Escarpment are scared by hundreds of landslides, and in the right conditions, these slide can trigger debris flows that spread far beyond the landslide.
What about fires and logging?
A third trigger for debris flows is the sudden removal of the forest overstory. The big trees in our Pacific Northwest forests capture and hold a tremendous amount of rain on their surfaces that never reaches the ground, with some of the moisture directly absorbed by the trees and much of it simply evaporating. Clear cut logging removes this buffer, allowing much more precipitation to suddenly reach the soil, triggering erosion, landslides and debris flows.
Logging roads are especially impactful by cutting into the soil profile on steep slopes and allowing runoff to infiltrate under the soil layer and destabilized soils. This is well-documented as a source of major landslides in heavily logged areas. Thankfully, most of the forested western end of the Gorge is protected from logging, including the Nesmith Escarpment (though early white settlers logged these areas of the Gorge extensively)
The 2017 Eagle Creek Fire has not only destabilized steep slopes throughout the burn by killing the protective forest cover, it also revealed the tortured landscape of braided flood channels on the Nesmith Fan once hidden under dense vegetation. This image from just after the fire shows a volunteer trail crew scouting Trail 400 where it crosses the fan. The route curves in and out of the dozens of channels and debris piles formed by past flood events
Fire can have a similar effect on runoff when the forest canopy is completely killed. This is why new research shows that attempting to log recently burned areas can have serious effects by disturbing newly exposed soils and worsening the increased erosion that would already result from fires.
In the Gorge, the 2017 Eagle Creek Fire burned most of the Nesmith Escarpment, raising serious concerns about the debris flow activity accelerating here in the coming decades. The debris flows earlier this year may have been the first major events to have been triggered as much by deforestation from the fire as by oversaturated soils. The following photo pair shows the extent of the burn on the Nesmith Escarpment, with the first photo taken just a few weeks before the fire in 2017 and the second photo taken in 2018, when the fire’s impact was clearly visible.
The January 2021 debris flow
The Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) has been making regular flights over the Eagle Creek Fire burn since late 2017 to monitor for potential flooding and landslides. While the main purpose of these surveys is to anticipate impacts on the highway, ODOT is also amassing an invaluable library of historic photos that document the fire and resulting geologic events in a way that has never been done before.
Their most recent flight includes photos from the January 2021 debris flows that tell the story in a way that words cannot match:
This view looking west toward the Ainsworth Interchange shows how Bucher Creek had completely covered the south half of the interchange and sent mud and debris flowing east on the freeway, itself. The 1996 and 2001 debris flows impacted much of the same area (ODOT)
A closer look at the 2021 debris flows where the Ainsworth interchange was overwhelmed with debris. A green highway sign marks what used to be a freeway on-ramp (ODOT)
Bucher creek briefly pushed the lobe of mud and debris in the lower right of this view directly toward the home in the first photo, before changing direction to the path the creek is following in this photo. This is a good example of how accumulated debris regularly forces the streams that carry the debris into new channels. (ODOT)
This view looking back at the Bucher Creek debris flow lobe shows just how close it came to the home and outbuildings shown in the previous photo (ODOT)
The view down Bucher Creek debris flow toward St. Peters Dome and the Columbia River from near the crest of the Nesmith Escarpment (ODOT)
Landslide in burned timber near the crest of the Nesmith Escarpment. This landslide fed debris directly into the Bucher Creek debris flow, and onto the freeway more than 3,500 feet below (ODOT)
What to do?
It’s tempting to wish away future geologic hazards by taking comfort from what we perceive to be more predictable past. After all, the modern Gorge we know has been evolving for more than 13,000 years, and long periods of slope stabilization have marked recent centuries. But can we count on periods of stability in a future that will be shaped by global climate change?
Almost surely not. All indications are for more volatility in both weather and flood events like those that have built the Nesmith Fan. Recent evidence increasingly supports the reality that our landscapes are changing along with the climate. In a 2016 report on landslide risks by Multnomah County, the number of events escalated over the past 25 years, including at the Nesmith Escarpment (see table, below).
The best path for adapting to this reality and becoming more resilient in response to future events is to accept the ongoing risk from the Nesmith Escarpment. In the near-term, this means regularly repairing I-84 and the parallel Union Pacific railroad after flood events that will become increasingly common and disruptive. It also means installing early warning systems along these routes for the traveling public and commers, as well as the residents of the area who live in harm’s way.
The 2021 debris flow along Tumalt Creek during this year’s series of flood events on the Nesmith Fan was a textbook example of why adapting in the near-term to protect existing infrastructure is a tall order. The following images show just how unpredictable and unmanageable this steam has become for ODOT.
Once Tumalt Creek reaches the foot of the Nesmith Escarpment and begins to flow across the fan, its course continually shifts and changes, making it very difficult to predict where each debris flow event might be headed (ODOT)
A single culvert (above) carries Tumalt Creek under the freeway and frontage road, but the Nesmith Fan is a maze of shifting streambeds by definition, making it nearly impossible to force streams to obey culvert locations (ODOT)
The channel carrying the debris flow on Tumalt Creek that overwhelmed the frontage road and I-84 in February later dried up, with the creek shifting to another channel after the flood (ODOT)
This screen was installed at another culvert that Tumalt Creek has swept through in past debris flow eventsl. While this device might keep small debris flows from overwhelming the culvert, it has no chance against the increasingly large debris flows that we can expect on the Nesmith Fan (ODOT)
This is the view from the frontage road looking upstream at the large, main culvert intended for Tumalt Creek – though it had shifted out of the channel when this photo was taken a few months after the February event. The flatness of the terrain on the Nesmith Fan is evident here, with no obvious stream chanel except for the grading and contouring by highway crews (ODOT)
Adapting to a new reality
In the long term, coping with debris flows also means facing some tough questions for those who live on the Nesmith Fan. For some, it’s a place where families have settled for generations. For others, it’s a dream home they’ve put their life savings into on the Columbia River in the heart of the Gorge. But for anyone who lives here, the risks are real and growing – as the death of a local resident in this year’s debris flows reminds us.
Across the country, climate change and rising sea levels are impacting millions of homes and businesses built in floodplains formerly classified as “100-year”, but now seeing regular flooding. In the past, the U.S. Government has provided public flood insurance for those living or operating a business in a flood zone, but the increasing frequency of catastrophic events in flood and hurricane-prone regions like the Mississippi Valley, Texas, Florida and Carolina coasts is pushing federal flood insurance premiums sharply up. This does not bode well for those living and working in hazard zones in the Pacific Northwest, including the rural communities scattered across the Nesmith Fan.
Notices like this will become a way of life for Nesmith Fan residents in coming years
In some places along the Mississippi Valley, the federal government has begun simply relocating homes, and even whole towns, rather than rebuilding them in harm’s way. Could this be a model for the Nesmith Fan? Possibly, though most of the private homes in the path of debris flows are not in the flood plain, and may not be eligible for any form of subsidized federal insurance or assistance, short of a disaster.
A more direct approach that could be taken at the state level is a simple buy-out, over time. Where flood-prone areas in other parts of the country might simply have value as farm or grazing land, the Gorge is a world class scenic area, and both public land agencies and non-profits are actively acquiring land for conservation and public use. As Gorge locations go, it’s hard to find a spot as spectacular as the Nesmith Fan and the escarpment that rises above it.
Already, the Forest Service and Oregon State Parks have acquired land on the Nesmith Fan for recreation and to provide habitat under the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area provisions, including at least two parcels with coveted river access. Permanent funding of the federal Land and Water Conservation Fund last year should also help jump-start public acquisitions in the Gorge that have stalled in recent years, and could help spur land owners considering their options.
Katanai Rock (left) and St. Peters Dome (right) rise above orchards at Dodson in this 1940s view from the old Columbia River Highway
Recent events are surely changing the dynamic for landowners in the Gorge, as well. Would some residents living on the Nesmith Fan be more open to a buy-out after witnessing the devastation of last year’s debris flows, knowing that more are likely to come in the wake of the Eagle Creek Fire? Probably. Others – especially the string of luxury homes along the Columbia River – might be more motivated by legacy, and for these folks, non-profit conservation trusts and easements could be a tool for transitioning private land into public ownership over time.
In the meantime, expect more flooding, debris flows and periodic closures of I-84 during the rainy months. And probably more fires in summer, too. This is the new normal in the Realm of St. Peter, after all, and it’s a cycle that will continue for all our lifetimes, and beyond.
Tribal fishing platforms line the Columbia River as Mount Hood floats on the horizon at the proposed Columbia Hills pumped energy project site
A few folks had questions about the Goldendale Energy Project (what I called the “Columbia Hills Energy Project” in my last post), so I thought I’d post some resources for anyone looking to learn more about the project and how to help the coalition of opponents.
Do you take scenes like this in the eastern Columbia River Gorge for granted? Read on…
As we slowly emerge from a year of pandemic, three milestones in Columbia River Gorge news are noteworthy for those who love WyEast Country. What do they have in comment? In each case, the multi-layered governance (or lack thereof) in the Gorge continues to be a hurdle, even when the news is very good… or even great!
The Great: Mitchell Point Tunnel Project
For many years the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) has been quietly moving toward actually replacing the legendary Mitchell Point “tunnel of many windows” with a new windowed tunnel. The new tunnel is along the bike and pedestrian trail that ODOT has been building to reconnect the original Historic Columbia River Highway, and construction began this spring. It’s a bold and visionary project, and another dramatic nod toward historic restoration along the old route. The former Oregon Highway Division destroyed the original tunnel in the 1966, when it was deemed a hazard to traffic on the modern freeway being constructed directly below, and it has been a dream for many to see it restored ever since.
The new 655-foot tunnel will have five arched windows, roughly patterned after the original Mitchell Point Tunnel. When completed, the tunnel will become the crown jewel of the larger Historic Columbia River Highway State Trail, a concept 35 years in the making, with just five miles of trail remaining to be constructed. When the last five miles are complete, the trail is destined to become a world-class cycling destination that will allow visitors to ride from Troutdale to The Dalles without traveling along the modern freeway.
The iconic Mitchell Point Tunnel was completed in 1915, but it was destroyed by freeway construction just 51 years later in 1966. It lives on in our collective memory as the greatest engineering marvel of the original Columbia River Highway
This 1920s view of the original Mitchell Point Tunnel from the Washington side of the Columbia River shows both west viaduct that led to the tunnel and the famous series of windows (on the left). Freeway construction at the base of the cliffs in the 1960s destroyed both the tunnel and viaduct
The new Mitchell Point Tunnel will enter the basalt walls of Mitchell Spur, the smaller, northern offshoot of Mitchell Point, proper, and connect the existing Mitchell Point Wayside on the west side of the spur to a future trail and historic highway alignment east of Mitchell Point. Between the two new tunnel portals, five windows will frame Gorge views and light the way for visitors, providing an experience similar to what early motorists enjoyed from their Model-Ts in the early 1920s.
ODOT has posted a video on YouTube with drone footage and more background on the new tunnel:
While the new tunnel is certain to draw visitors who simply want to walk its length and enjoy the views, it also offers a terrific opportunity to create loop hikes that build upon the existing Mitchell Point Trail. This steep and difficult to maintain route is more like a goat path, but has become an increasingly popular viewpoint trail as placed like Angels Rest become overwhelmingly crowded. The Oregon Department of Parks and Recreation (OPRD) has already adopted a new loop trail concept for the west side of Mitchell Point that also would provide a better graded approach to the summit, and a loop for those willing to return along the existing, very steep route.
This ODOT rendering shows the planned approach to the west portal of the new Mitchell Point Tunnel from the perspective of the Historic Columbia River Highway State Trail, which currently stubs out at these cliffs (ODOT)
This rendering also shows the new west portal that ODOT is constructing for the new Mitchell Point Tunnel. A bump-out viewpoint (on the left) is also included in the design (ODOT)
This concept shows the design for five windows that will be incorporated into the new tunnel at Mitchell Point. ODOT describes the tunnel interior as “modern concrete”, so the exposed rock surface in this rendering and visible in the previous portal rendering may not be part of the final plan (ODOT)
This view shows the existing overlook at the Mitchell Point Wayside, where the paved trail stubs out at berm at the base of Mitchell Spur’s cliffs. The west portal to the new tunnel will enter the cliff visible just beyond the berm, at the right in this photo. The berm will be removed to extend the trail to the new tunnel portal.
The west portal design for the new tunnel preserves this relatively new (2013) overlook at Mitchell Point, already a popular stop for Gorge visitors
The new tunnel also offers a loop trail opportunity from the east side of Mitchell Point, with the tunnel providing a return to the main trailhead. Loop trails are popular with hikers because you get to see more scenery for your effort. But they can also be managed as one-way trails where crowds are a problem, greatly lessening the impact of passing hikers on heavily traveled trails. The OPRD plan for the Gorge also includes a loop trail concept for Angels Rest with this exact purpose in mind. From a hiker’s perspective, one-way loops also mean encountering far fewer people along your hike, so it can greatly improve the outdoor experience.
Will Mitchell Point become as crowded as Angels Rest? Maybe someday, though not anytime soon, simply because it’s much farther from Portland. But it will certainly become more popular than it is today, as foot traffic here has steadily grown over the past decade or so. With this in mind, one of the disappointments of the Mitchell Point project is the failure to plan for future crowds, and especially to differentiate between visitor types in the planned parking improvements. In the past, most visitors to Mitchell Point were there to walk to the existing overlook at the wayside, spending just a few minutes there while on their driving tour of the Gorge. Hikers, meanwhile, can spend several hours laboring up the steep path to the summit.
Currently, both kinds of visitors compete for the same limited number of parking spots at Mitchell Point. As with unmanaged waysides elsewhere in the Gorge (Latourell Falls, Wahkeena Falls, Starvation Creek are just a few examples), hikers are now filling all of the spots at Mitchell Point on weekends, leaving touring families with no place to park. The new ODOT plan will create 18 parking spaces (including one disabled spot) compared to 16 today (including two disabled spaces). The net increase of two parking spaces is a drop in the bucket for this increasingly popular trailhead.
The existing parking area at Mitchell Point is relatively new – completed in early 2013, when this photo was taken. It provides a total of 16 parking spots, including two disabled spots. The construction of the Mitchell Point tunnel includes a complete reconstruction of the existing parking area
There are a couple of solutions that ODOT and OPRD could easily incorporate into the current construction phase without rivisitng the basic parking plan. First, mark a few parking spots for short-term, 30-minute parking for touring motorists to visit the wayside viewpoint and walk the new tunnel. Yes, it would have to be enforced to be effective, but even sporadic enforcement with a healthy fine would send a shockwave through hiking social media sites.
This is an ODOT rendering of the new parking area at Mitchell Point. While it’s surprising to see the fairly new parking lot being reconstructed so soon, the new design does manage to have a smaller paved area while expanding parking spaces (to a total of 18 compared to 16 today) and has a more efficient circulation design. The areas shown with picnic tables were once part of a very large parking area here as recently as 2012, so it’s disappointing that this design doesn’t better accommodate demand by included more spaces in that area (ODOT)
Second, ODOT and OPRD could take formally advantage of the long access drive to the Mitchell Point Wayside to allow for overflow parking. At a meeting of the Historic Columbia River Highway Steering Committee last summer, I asked if overflow shoulder parking would be allowed along the access road, and the ODOT response was a disappointing “no”.
That’s not only short-sighted, it’s also a state of denial. Already, the nearby Starvation Creek wayside routinely has cars parked along both the access and exits roads, all the way to the freeway, for lack of a trailhead space and an effective parking management plan. As a result, weekend touring motorists hoping to visit the falls or use the restrooms at Starvation Creek have no prayer of finding a spot, as the entire lot is packed with hikers, most of them on hours-long hikes to the summit of Mount Defiance. That gives ODOT and OPRD a black eye, and a similar situation will surely unfold at the new Mitchell Point trailhead if parking isn’t more actively managed.
The Sad: Oneonta Tunnel Restoration
The Oneonta Tunnel in about 1915,, soon after it opened and before this section of the Historic Columbia River Highway was paved
In other tunnel news, ODOT recently (re)completed the restoration of the Oneonta Tunnel, near Multnomah Falls. The agency once again rebuilt the timbered interior of the tunnel, restoring work that was originally done back in the mid-2000 and completely burned in the 2017 Eagle Creek Fire. It’s a beautiful restoration effort, and you should go see it soon, before it is once again destroyed by vandals carving up the restored woodwork. Because that sad fate is all but inevitable.
I wrote about this project recently in A Second Chance and New Vision for Oneonta? While there may be no appetite at ODOT or OPRD to pursue something more whimsical (like the museum proposed in the previous article!), it is frustrating to see the new restoration completed with zero consideration given to protecting the public’s investment from vandals. At the same meeting of the Historic Columbia River Highway Steering Committee last summer, I asked ODOT officials if there was a plan to secure the tunnel with gates of some kind, and the response was “no, because under national scenic area regulations, we can only restore it to its exact condition before the fire.”
Mobs of young people descended on Oneonta Gorge each summer before the 2017 Eagle Creek Fire closed the area. Many made a point of vandalizing the wood interior of the Oneonta Tunnel while they were there
Still more frustrating is the fact that top officials from the U.S. Forest Service and ODOT who oversee funding for Gorge projects and scenic area regulation were part of this virtual meeting, and sat in silence when I asked whether this was a good use of public resources. Another committee member commented that vandalism in the form of tagging and graffiti has always been a problem in the Gorge. Perhaps, but is the point is that we shouldn’t care?
Well, I’m still not buying it. If there is one thing that’s certain for large, well-funded agencies like the Forest Service and ODOT, it’s that where there is a will, there is a way. The cost to install gates would have been negligible compared to what ODOT budgets for the Gorge in a given year, and surely would be less costly than another redo in the coming years. In this case, there was simply no agency interest from the Forest Service or ODOT in protecting the newly restored tunnel, and that’s really discouraging.
ODOT completed the second restoration of the Oneonta Tunnel this spring, replacing the wood lining that was burned away in the 2017 Eagle Creek Fire. Despite its recent history of vandalism, the tunnel is now open and completely unprotected, night and day
So, as lovely as the (second) restoration of the Oneonta Tunnel is, it falls under the column of “sad” for its poor stewardship of both the historic resource and the public funds spent to restore it. But who knows, maybe once the tagging starts up and triggers some unwelcome local media coverage, we’ll see some protection installed? A late response would be better than not at all, and I’d sure like to be proven wrong on the fate of the old tunnel.
The Ugly: Columbia Hills Energy Project
These beautiful, mosaic talus slopes along the Columbia Hills are ground zero for a proposed energy project that threatens to change the area forever. A jarring sea of giant wind turbines were installed along the crest of what is a sacred ridge for area tribes over the past 15 years, and now the turbines are the basis for still more energy development in this unprotected part of the Gorge
I will reluctantly end this article with one of the toughest development proposals to emerge in the Gorge in recent years. As ugly as the project is, however, the picture is not entirely bleak. The proposal is formally known as the “Goldendale Energy Project”, taking its name from what used to be the Goldendale Aluminum Plant, located adjacent to the John Day Dam in the eastern Gorge. But the site is miles away from Goldendale, Washington, and more importantly, it’s within the Columbia River Gorge and centered on Columbia Hills, a place sacred to area tribes. So, I’ve called it the Columbia Hills Energy Project for this article.
The aluminum plant at the John Day Dam went out of business decades ago, leaving badly polluted soils and groundwater behind where smelters once stood. It has since been undergoing a gradual cleanup operation, work that is ongoing. The Columbia Hills “stored energy” project proposes to build a large water storage basin in this polluted brownfield, connected by pipes to a second basin at the crest of the Columbia Hills, 2,000 vertical feet directly above the John Day Dam and the old aluminum plant site. When wind turbines are generating excess energy, water from the lower basin would be pumped to the upper basin, and could then be released back down to the lower basin to power hydro turbines during periods of peak demand (or low wind).
The system on the right is proposed for the Columbia Hills (Rye Development)
To the Ka-milt-pah band of the Yakima Nation (known in English as the Rock Creek Band), the Columbia Hills here are sacred. Their significance goes to the very creation of the Columbia Gorge, itself. Scientists believe the ice age Bretz (or Missoula) floods continued to repeatedly overwhelm the Gorge with hundreds of feet of water for nearly 2,000 years, finally ending some 13,000 years ago. Virtually every aspect of the Gorge as we know it was shaped by the floods, including the steep, exposed cliffs and rock monoliths that give the Gorge its iconic beauty. Their oral tradition tells us that the ancestral Ka-milt-pah people climbed to these ridge tops to escape this series of massive ice-age floods, watching the cataclysm from these high vantage points.
Today, the Ka-milt-pah continue to gather first foods from these same hills, though now with the permission of farmers who own deeds to the ceded tribal lands here. In yet another insult to traditions and the defacement of their sacred places, tribal members now must gather foods under the shadow and hum of giant wind turbines that send “green” electricity to Portlanders. Unseen to urbanites are the miles of gravel access roads that were cut into pristine desert soils along these ridges to build and maintain the turbines, destroying still more of the ecosystem that the Ka-milt-pah people relied upon for millennia. And in yet another cruel irony, the windmills are now are central to the Columbia Hills Energy Project, as well.
The defunct, polluted aluminum plant at John Day dam (seen far below in this view) is proposed to hold the lower reservoir for the closed-loop energy system. This view is from the crest of the Columbia Hills, on sacred tribal land 2,000 feet above the river, where the upper reservoir would be constructed (Portland Business Journal)
The towering wind turbine that now line the Columbia Hills above John Day Dam are aggressively marketed as benign sources of clean energy, and yet each turbine requires a new road to be built, leaving a permanent scar on the land and introducing invasive plants to the largely pristine desert landscape. This snaking section of road in this view is on sacred tribal land near the proposed Columbia Hills Energy Project (Google Earth)
The service roads built for these windmills on the crest of the Columbia Hills resemble suburban cul-de-sacs, each cut into desert ground that had never even been plowed, and has provided tribal first foods for millennia (Google Earth)
Did you know that the stunning stretch of the Columbia River Gorge east of the Deschutes River does not enjoy the protections provided by the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area (CRGNSA) to areas west of the Deschutes? The most jarring evidence of this second-class status are the hundreds of massive, white wind turbines that now dot the Columbia Hills along this unprotected stretch of the Gorge, from Maryhill Museum east to the John Day river and beyond. The visual impact of these turbines therefore wasn’t even a factor when they were constructed over the past 15 years.
It is truly a miracle and testament to the tenacity of Gorge advocates in the 1980s that we even have a CRGNSA to protect the Gorge, yet it’s also true that leaving the eastern portion of the Gorge out of the bill left the area tragically vulnerable to energy and development schemes that continue forever scar the Gorge we shall leave to future generations. The Columbia Hills Energy Project may be the latest scheme, but it certainly won’t be the last (lesser-known fact: the Maryhill Museum was among the opponents of the CRGNSA in the 1980s, which explains the forest of windmills that now mar the Gorge rim directly above the museum and continue for miles to the east).
The ancient and sustainable trumped by the new and industrial: the 1971 John Day Dam dwarfs traditional tribal fishing platforms, located just downstream from the dam
For the Danish corporate investors behind this project, the windmills along the Columbia Hills provide a world-class opportunity for pumped storage development. The hills rise anywhere from 1,200 to 2,000 feet above the Columbia River, a ready source of water to fill storage tanks. That’s probably as much as they know. The fact that it’s also remote from Portland urbanites who might otherwise be shocked to see a development of this scale proposed in “their Gorge” is just good fortune for the investors.
And so, it has fallen to the Confederated Yakima, Umatilla and Nez Perce nations to defend their homelands from yet another assault by Europeans seeking to, once again, commodify their native lands.
Countless generations of tribal fisherman have harvested salmon on these pebble beaches in the east Gorge for millennia. The lower reservoir for the proposed “energy loop” would be a stone’s throw from this iconic scene. Is it even possible to measure economic impacts of energy project against threats to the very culture of indigenous people?
The pace of change in the eastern stretch of the Gorge has been breathtaking in the past few decades. In 1957 – just 64 years ago — the gates on The Dalles Dam closed, drowning Celilo Falls and surrounding tribal settlements under 40 feet of water. This ended a way of life for indigenous peoples who had thrived here for thousands of years. Nine years later, in 1966, ODOT blasted and filled a 4-lane swath through the Gorge to construct today’s Interstate-84, destroying miles of wetlands and beaches along the way, and cutting off access to traditional tribal fishing sites in the process. In 1971, the gates were closed on John Day Dam, at the head of slackwater created by The Dalles Dam. Another stretch of rapids along the once-wild river disappeared, along with more beaches and wetlands.
The vast, colorful pebble beaches in the east Gorge were left here by ice age floods that brought rock from the northern Rocky Mountains to the Columbia River Gorge. This river-worn piece of petrified wood is typical of these deposits
Both dams brought hundreds of steel transmission towers and thousands of miles of electrical cable that now drapes across the once-pristine Gorge landscape. And in the 2000s, big utilities rushed after state and federal renewable energy tax credits to line the Columbia Hills with hundreds of windmills, many built on sacred tribal sites. It’s true, these are all renewable energy sources that our region depends upon to power our homes and industry. Yet, it’s also true that our cheap energy has come at a catastrophic cost to tribal culture and economies, and wreaked havoc on one of the most spectacular natural landscapes on the planet. Isn’t it time to question just how “green” the energy harnessed in the Gorge really is?
Fortunately, a broad coalition of conservation advocates have joined the tribes in challenging the Columbia Hills Energy Project. They include both the Oregon and Washington chapters of the Sierra Club, the Northwest Environmental Defense Center, Columbia Riverkeeper, Food and Water Watch, Portland Audubon and several other organizations. This is encouraging, as corporate energy projects are famously costly and drawn-out battles with deep-pocketed (and often foreign) investors who are willing to ride out the opposition and ingratiate themselves to local elected officials. Witness that Washington Governor Jay Inslee recently signed a fast-track provision for energy storage projects just like this one (though we don’t know his position on this specific proposal).
This lovely desert gulch along the Columbia River is immediately adjacent to the proposed Columbia Hills Energy Project. How will it be impacted? We don’t know yet…
Thankfully, the Washington Department of Ecology has determined the project to have “significant environmental impact”, ensuring that some rigor will be applied in the state permitting review. Whether that review can truly measure the impact of this proposal on tribal rights and traditions remains and open question that courts will likely have to decide.
Yes, stored energy projects are a good idea. They’re a creative, sustainable solution in a world facing a global climate crisis. We should welcome them!
Killed coyote strung up on a fence along Center Ridge Road in Wasco County this winter
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Author’s note: I’ve gone back and forth on whether to include some difficult images in this article. I hope readers will understand why it’s important to see them once you’ve read the piece.
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As we reach the one-year mark of the COVID-19 pandemic that has turned our world upside down, I’ve been reflecting on how I spent much of my outdoor time over the past year in the desert country east of Mount Hood, where I could spend an entire day without seeing another soul. Along the way, I reconnected with some of my favorite spots, and found many more that were new to me. I was reminded why I fell in love with dry side of the mountains when I lived and worked there for seven magical summers during my youth.
Over the past year of exploring the backroads east of the mountain, I also didn’t see a single killed coyote. Not one! This surprised me. It was once commonplace in sagebrush country to find their carcasses strung on barbed wire fences. Coyotes were vermin to old-school ranchers. Then, just last month, I ran across the familiar, grim scene captured at the top of this article. It was up on Center Ridge, in the rolling wheat country above the Columbia River. And yet, scenes like this that were once routine in ranch country have become rare these days. Why?
The rolling wheat fields on Center Ridge are prime habitat for coyotes (Dalles Mountain, Mount Adams and Mount Rainier are in the distance)
Perhaps because most ranchers today have advanced degrees in agriculture, their knowledge includes a formal science education that gives them an understanding of the benefits of living with predators, not exterminating them. They understand that top predators may be a nuisance to livestock, but they are also the ecological keystone that keeps the rest of the natural system in balance, which, in turn, is of even greater benefit to ranchers and farmers.
So, these days when I run across a shot, snared or poisoned coyote slung over a fence, there’s a pretty good chance that it’s the mark of an old timer — or simply someone who just doesn’t know any better. Old ways die hard. This used to be a standard practice based on the myth that the carcass would somehow cause other coyotes to shy away. That’s a tired idea borne of ignorance and unfounded hatred for the animals, nothing more.
Today’s ranchers in Oregon are far more likely to appreciate the benefits coyotes bring to their bottom line, especially in the wheat country along the eastern Columbia River Gorge. Along with raptors, coyotes keep the rodent population (mostly rabbits, gophers, mice and voles) in check, keep grazing deer on the move and generally mind their own business as they cruise their very large territories. They also feed on snakes and sometimes carrion, as well as fruit and grass in season. Packs of coyotes may even take down young or infirm deer or antelope, though this is uncommon.
This remnant grassland view of Tygh Ridge is what much of the east side looked like before the arrival of settlement farming in the 1800s and it remains prime coyote habitat today
Coyotes often roam in organized packs, led by an alpha male and female pair that often mate for life, and that are the only breeding pair in the pack. The beta coyotes in the pack are non-breeding, and simply help hunt and feed the offspring of the alpha pair. Thus, killing an alpha male or female (or both) simply splits up the pack, opening the surviving animals to pair with lone males to create still more coyote families. For this reason, modern ranchers also understand that killing coyotes to remove them from the landscape can have exactly opposite the intended effect.
Despite over a century of systematic killing, coyotes are flourishing and expanding their territory, and now live in 49 states. This is partly because of the proliferation of new breeding packs from the extermination of alpha pairs, but mostly it’s because they’re very smart. Like the domesticated dogs that we spend billions on each year to pamper and celebrate as companions, coyotes are quick to observe every detail of human behavior and learn our ways. For wild coyotes, that means avoiding people – and our various means of exterminating them. That’s why seeing a coyote in the wild is a treat, and is typically fleeting.
Their ability to adapt has also allowed coyotes to move into urban areas, including Portland, where they have assumed top predator status. We spot them right here in my neighborhood in North Portland, where they roam the large natural areas and prey upon rats, opossum, raccoons and – especially – feral cats. While that last part might be hard for some to accept, the fact is, feral cats are a major problem in urban areas as predators of native birds. The arrival of coyotes is helping mitigate the impact of these non-native carnivore in our cities. It’s also true that coyotes can prey upon small pets in the city, a reminder to humans to keep our pets in enclosed areas and indoors at night.
This young coyote was killed and strung up by a rancher on Dalles Mountain Road a few years ago. This used to be a common sight in the ranch country of the eastern Columbia River Gorge
Coyotes have also responded to our simultaneous war on cougars and wolves that began in the 1700s, and continues to this day. Where wolves and cougars were once the apex species in many parts of the country, and preyed upon or hazed the smaller coyote, it is the coyote that has adapted and stepped into the void left by the disappearance of these larger predators. As cougars and wolves begin to rebound in a few areas in the country, they are reclaiming their top predator role, once again keeping coyotes in check. When wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone National Park in the 1990s, the coyote population dropped by 40 percent!
Because of their size and potential threat to humans, wolves and cougars will likely always be less tolerated in our world. Though we’re just beginning to appreciate it, the role of coyotes as the substitute apex species in areas once roamed by wolves and cougars has helped keep natural systems in balance for all species – plant and animal.
Natural Survivors
Coyotes have an enormous range, with packs maintaining highly organized territories of anywhere from five to fifteen square miles – enough to cover multiple ranches, even in the sprawling wheat and sagebrush country east of Mount Hood. Like our domestic dogs, they have well-traveled routes, typically along ridgetops or along the edge of clearings where they can see the terrain and hunt for rodents. Mostly, they seek to avoid people in their rambles, which is understandable, given our history of hostility toward the species.
Coyote pups (Wikipedia)
In the wild, coyotes live short lives of just 5-10 years, though in captivity they can live up to 20 years. Adults in the wild typically weigh from 20 to 35 pounds, about the size of a Siberian Husky, though urban coyotes can reach as much as 45 pounds. Coyote alpha pairs can produce a litter of 2-12 pups annually, with pups reaching maturity in about 6 months. Coyote pups have a very high mortality rate of up to 90 percent, however, and only a few survive to adulthood. Some that survive will stay with their pack, others will roam and join other packs and a few males become lone coyotes, wandering on their own.
If you have the opportunity to see a coyote in the wild, you can’t help but be taken by how closely they resemble our domestic dogs, both in their appearance and behavior. They’re truly beautiful animals, and to watch them sprint upwards of 40 mph, it’s easy to see why native cultures celebrated both their intelligence and athleticism.
If you have the good fortune to hear a pack howling at night, it’s an especially memorable experience. No, they don’t represent a real threat to us, but it’s still quite humbling to hear them in the dark, knowing they are completely adapted to that environment and completely aware of us – even if we can’t see them. At night, we are in their realm.
Adult coyote hunting (Wikipedia)
The main threats to coyotes in the wild include some of the same canine diseases that threaten our domestic dogs, as well as lack of food and winter cold. In many parts of the country, humans continue to be a major threat with competitive “kill contests” still held to exterminate coyotes. In 2017, more than 11,000 coyotes were killed in Utah, alone, for $500,000 in bounties put up by state officials. Over 100,000 coyotes are still killed every year in the United States. Though these mass killings are gradually losing favor as science wins out over folklore, it’s still common for state wildlife agencies to promote methods for exterminating coyotes.
The good news is that ranchers and farmers are increasingly coming around to the benefits of co-existing with coyotes for all the good they bring to the land. This means changing their farming practices, especially during calving and lambing season in ranch country.
In Oregon, coyotes are classified as a non-game predator. What does that mean? It means that anyone can kill a coyote, with no limit or permit required. Thankfully, science is winning here, too. Wildlife agencies and agriculture science are evolving, promoting science-based best practices for farmers and ranchers to co-exist with coyotes. Oregon’s Department of Fish and Wildlife has replaced old-school instructions for coyote extermination on its website with new-school guidelines on how to co-exist. That’s real progress, though regulating coyote hunting will be a tougher political hurdle to clear.
Urban coyote in Lincoln Park, Chicago (Wikimedia)
The more worrisome trend is urbanites moving into farm and ranch country and bringing domestic cats and toy-breed dogs with them. These small pets make for easy prey for coyotes, especially when left to roam. Worse, people moving into ranch country often encourage coyotes to lose their fear of humans by leaving pet food outside and by not treating them as wild animals. Just as urbanities living in the country are a growing nuisance to farmers with their complaints about dust, noise and pesticides that come with farming, these folks may also emerge to be a new threat to coyotes, too, simply by encouraging them to lose their fear of us.
Despite these threats, and our long war against them, coyotes continue to adapt and thrive. Scientists now recognize 19 subspecies of coyote, including urban species that are now common in city parks and preserves across the country. Coyotes have observed us and figured us out, and they are here to stay. Their ability to adapt bodes well for the species, and for the ecosystems that increasingly depend on them as top predators, too.
Epilogue… and Prologue?
Over the winter, I was coming down a gravel road from Center Ridge into a narrow Easton Canyon, just south of The Dalles. I stopped to take a photo of Mount Hood when I spotted a group of Mule deer perfectly silhouetted against the last glow of sunset. I watched this lovely scene unfold for quite a while, until the deer had moved on and stars suddenly began to fill the night sky.
Mule deer silhouetted against Mount Hood in the Center Ridge area of Wasco County
As I was quietly packing up my camera gear in the dark, I was startled by a sudden series of loud, quick yips right behind me! A coyote was in the sagebrush directly above the road, somewhere along the canyon wall. Soon, more yips began to echo from across the canyon, first below me, then from across the canyon, then further up the canyon. The chorus grew until some of the yips turned to howls, then went silent, as quickly as they had started.
It was an eerie experience that made my hair stand on end. I’d heard coyotes many times before, but I had never been in the middle of a pack. Though I knew I wasn’t in danger, the moment still triggered a primal reaction – these were wild predators, after all. I hoofed it back to the car, quickly loaded up my gear and gave thanks for a truly memorable encounter.
So, when I came across that coyote carcass a few weeks ago, senselessly killed and strung up on a barbed wire fence, I couldn’t help but appreciate what was left of this once-beautiful, brilliant animal. Much of its handsome coat was still intact and moving in the breeze, its ears still pointed and perfect. Were it not mangled, ribs protruding, I might have thought it somehow alive.
A sad, senseless practice fading with time, a grim reminder of our ignorance and folly in attempting to control the natural world around us
The sight of this animal brought back that nighttime chorus under the stars from just a few weeks before, just a couple of miles from this spot. Had this unlucky coyote been among those that I heard that night? Quite possibly. It also gave me a deeper appreciation for the resiliency and balance of nature all around us, despite our relentless efforts to upset it. The coyotes are adapting and winning. Thankfully.
As a broader society, we’re slowly changing our thinking about predators, too. We’re getting better at observing and understanding them and beginning to accept their presence – especially coyotes. We seem to be on a path of learning to simply avoid coyotes just as they avoid us, ensuring that they remain truly wild. We’re learning to co-exist.
The lost forest on Cedar Island in the Deschutes River canyon
Head north from the tiny town of Maupin into the arid desert canyon of the Deschutes River and you will eventually reach a wide gooseneck in the river, where a low ridge that forms the bend is known as the “Beavertail”. As the gravel access road crests the Beavertail, a river island dotted with trees suddenly comes into view. The scene is startling in an environment where even Western juniper struggle to survive, and the few trees that exist are mostly thickets of Red alder hugging the river’s edge.
At first glance, these seem to be Ponderosa pine, a reasonable guess, given that Ponderosa are the most drought tolerant of the big confers in Oregon. But as you approach a few of these trees that have jumped the island and flank the access road, it becomes clear that these aren’t pines at all.
In fact, this is a lost stand of about sixty Incense cedar (Calocedrus decurrens) trees forming a completely isolated colony in the middle of the desert. They have found a way to thrive more than 20 miles east of the nearest stand, in the Cascade Mountain, where these trees grow along the forested southeast slopes of Mount Hood. Here, they survive with just 10-15” of rain per year, compared to the 40-50” their mountain cousins receive.
Incense Cedar (Calocedrus decurrens) foliage – a close cousin to our familiar Western red cedar
The thick, distinctively reddish bark on Incense Cedar gives the tree some insulation from range fires
A closer look at the bright green foliage of these trees shows Incense cedar to be a cousin to Oregon’s Western red cedar, Alaska cedar and Port Orford cedar. None of these are true cedars, but all are related members in the cypress family, and all but the Port Orford cedar grow on the slopes of Mount Hood.
Of these, the Incense cedar is the most drought-tolerant and thrives on the dry side of the Cascades, among other big conifers like Douglas fir and Ponderosa Pine. Incense Cedar tend to grow interspersed among these other trees, and seldom form pure stands. That’s part of what makes the lost grove on Cedar Island unique, though that’s also a reflection of the extreme environment they have pioneered here – one that other big conifers are not able to survive.
Young Incense cedar have a beautiful conical form that makes them popular trees in urban landscapes
Young Incense cedar are prized as cultivated trees for their brilliant foliage and symmetrical, conical shape (above). As they age, Incense cedar begin to look more like a distant cousin to Giant sequoia, with deeply furrowed red bark and tortured, often multiple-trunked forms.
Incense cedar can live for centuries and reach as much as 150 feet in height at maturity. The champion in Oregon grows in the Siskiyou Mountains, and is 150 feet tall with a circumference of nearly 40 feet. Another dual-trunked Incense cedar in Southern Oregon is known as the Tanner Lake Giant (below), measured at 137 feet tall and more than 40 feet in circumference.
The mighty, two-trunked Tanner Lake Giant in Southern Oregon is more 40 feet in diameter (Wikipedia)
Mount Hood’s Incense cedar stands mark the very northern extreme of the range of these trees, which extends as far south as a few isolated stands in Baja. In California, they grow throughout the Sierras, with big Incense Cedar sprinkled among the Giant sequoia in Yosemite Valley. The trees also grow in isolated groves throughout California’s coastal mountains. In Oregon, scattered stands grow in the Ochoco Mountains and along some of the western ridges of the Great Basin.
Incense Cedar grow from Mount Hood south to the Baja Peninsula, following the east flank of the Cascades to the Siskiyous and along the Sierras
Most of the isolated stands of Incense cedar in dry places like the California coast ranges or Oregon Ochoco Mountains mark places where mountains rise up enough to produce an island of rainfall in an otherwise dry region. The trees of Cedar Island are just the opposite. Their habitat is at the bottom of a rocky desert canyon makes their ability to thrive here all the more remarkable.
Why here?
The Cedar Island lost forest of Incense cedar is truly remote. The following perspective view (below) shows just how far Cedar Island is from the green forests of the Cascades, nearly 20 miles to the west. Why did this grove of just 60 trees make its home here?
Part of the answer is the island, itself. While Incense cedar are most often found on dry sites in their typical mountain habitat, the Cedar Island grove lives on a gravel bar in the middle of the Deschutes River, where trees can touch the water table year-round with their roots. While the winters are plenty cold along the Deschutes – similar to the mountain habitat these trees prefer – the summers are intensely hot and arid. The basalt walls of the Deschutes Canyon also act to contain summer heat, creating a true oven during summer heat waves. The ability of the Cedar Island grove to maintain constant access to groundwater undoubtedly helps counter the lack of rainfall and summer heat they endure.
The Incense Cedars of Cedar Island rise above thickets of Red alder beneath the protective west wall of the Deschutes River canyon
Still, there are plenty of other gravel bars along the Deschutes, and only Cedar Island supports a grove of big conifers. What makes this gravel bar different?
Part of the puzzle is shape of the canyon walls that surround Cedar Island. At the Beavertail Bend, the Deschutes River swings sharply west, then reverses to head directly east, in each case carving near-vertical, 2,000 foot walls of basalt over the millennia. The aspect of these walls helps shade Cedar island by shortening exposure to hot summer sun by several hours per day compared to less protected parts of the canyon.
Cedar Island is protected from mid-day summer sun by towering, 2,000-foot canyon walls to the south and east
The west (upstream) end of Cedar Island seems to confirm the role of the canyon walls in allowing the Incense Cedar groves to survive. This part of the island (below) extends beyond the protective shade of the steep south wall of the canyon, and into the wide section of canyon where it is more exposed to the intense morning and midday sun during the hot summer months.
The west end of Cedar Island seems to be too exposed to summer sun for the Incense Cedars to survive there
Another piece of the puzzle is the gravel that makes up island, itself. While it allows the Cedar Island colony to reach the shallow water table with their root systems, it’s also very well-drained above the water table – something that Incense cedars prefer. At 10-12 feet above the average river level, the gravel bar is also tall enough to avoid being inundated or eroded by all but the worst flood events.
When did the Cedar Island colony become established? That’s unknown, but an image (below) taken from the east canyon rim in 1905 shows the island to be virtually cleared. There are a couple of explanations. First, the photo shows both rail lines that were under construction at the time, a race between two railroad barons that became known as “The Deschutes Railroad War”. It’s quite possible that Incense Cedar on the island were cut by the railroad crews for construction material or simply firewood. It’s also possible that the trees were actually introduced here at the time when the canyon was being intensely developed by the railroads. But the fact that the island was named for its cedars suggests the colony was here when railroad surveyors arrived.
1905 view of Cedar Island from the east canyon rim shows few trees compared to today… why?
Another explanation for the relatively bare island in 1905 could be flooding. Though the Deschutes is not prone to catastrophic floods like rivers west of the Cascades, the upstream dams didn’t exist when the first Incense Cedars pioneered the island. therefore, it’s likely that periodic floods swept across this flat sandbar – which was, itself, created by floods. The colony must have found a way to rebound from these events, assuming the Incense cedar grove has been here for centuries.
The following images (below) from 1911 were taken from the west side of the canyon and confirm that the Incense cedar grove on the island was much smaller at the turn of the century. These later images marked the end of construction of the railroad on the east side of the river. Today, a smaller colony of Incense cedar grows along the old railroad grade (now the access road) in the shade of the eastern canyon wall.
1911 view of Beavertail Bend from the west canyon rim, looking toward Cedar Island
Closer look at Cedar Island in the 1911 view showing just a few Incense cedars growing along the south margin of the island
Yet another explanation for the smaller grove in the early 1900s might be range fires. The sagebrush country of Oregon’s east side burns periodically, and fire is a natural, essential part of the ecosystem. For their part, Incense cedar have fire resistant bark that allows the trees to survive low-intensity fires (similar to Ponderosa pine and Sequoia), but when their crowns burn in more intensive fires, they have evolved to reseed and re-establish themselves quickly on burned ground. It could even be the case that railroad construction triggered a fire that cleared Cedar Island sometime before this photo was taken.
In 2018 a trio of range fires (below) swept through Wasco County, burning much of the lower Deschutes River canyon. The fires destroyed dozens of farm dwellings and outbuildings, too, a painful reminder that fires will always be part of the desert ecosystem here, even with much of the landscape converted to wheatfields. The Longhollow Fire was the middle of the three fires, and burned to the northwest bank of the Deschutes, but apparently did not jump the river to Cedar Island.
Had the fire reached the island, it could easily have crowned some of the Incense cedar trees. The open, park-like forest here has allowed the trees to keep their limbs almost to the ground, where trees in mixed forests typically lose their lower limbs.
A high crown helps protect a mature tree from low-to moderate intensity fires at its base climbing lower limbs like a ladder and potentially engulfing its crown. But unlike the forest fires that occur in the typical Incense Cedar range, range fires in open sagebrush country are generally low-intensity, fast-moving burns due to the lack of available fuels compared to forest fires, so even trees with low limbs can often survive range fires.
A closer look at the island suggests the fire did not cross the river in 2018, nor have fires burned the island in some time. First, none of the trees on Cedar Island shows burn marks on their lower trunks, a telltale sign of range fires that lasts for decades on trees that survive. Second, the presence of downed wood and a few Incense Cedar seedlings (below) confirms that no recent fires have swept the island, as young trees would almost certainly have been killed and dead forest debris completely burned.
The trunks of the Cedar Island grove don’t show burn marks, suggesting that range fires haven’t swept the island in decades
The downed alder logs in this view would almost certainly have burned in 2018, had the Longhollow Fire jumped the river. The small Incense cedar seedling toward the top of this photo would almost certainly have been killed by fire, as well.
Whatever the cause of Cedar Island being cleared at the turn of the 1900s, the grove of Incense cedars is well-established today, with large trees that could have started life soon after these early photos were taken. Yet, the lack of young trees on the island today is also noticeable, with just a few younger trees sprinkled among the mature stand. This could be due to competition, with the spacing of the trees defined by their root systems, and little moisture left for young trees to get established.
Most of the Incense Cedars on the island are mature, with few small seedlings present
Some of the younger trees that do exist are crowded along the river’s edge, suggesting that other young trees farther from the edge of the island simply couldn’t compete with the larger trees for available groundwater with their smaller, shallow root systems.
In their normal habitat, it would be rare for Incense cedars to hug a stream, but on Cedar Island it may be the only way young trees can become established
One of the secrets of the survival of the Cedar Island grove could be the small group of younger trees growing at the shaded foot of the southeast canyon wall. These are the only Incense cedars from the colony that extend beyond the island, and a number of very young trees are getting established here now. It could be that this part of the grove has helped reseed the island after flood events over the centuries.
It’s hard to see if this group of trees existed in the 1905 and 1911 photos, and it’s likely that railroad construction would have erased any trees in this area, anyway. But without any better evidence, it’s also possible that this branch of the colony is relatively new, seeded here by mature trees on the island after the railroad construction ended. If so, why did the colony move there, to steep rocky slopes far above the river and readily available water table?
This view shows a branch of the Cedar Island colony growing along the base of the eastern canyon wall. These trees are younger and seem to be expanding their presence, despite growing on rocky slopes far above the water table created by the river
The best explanation for this branch colony is probably the sun protection provided by the canyon walls, as these trees are growing in an “elbow” where the north and west facing walls meet, creating a relatively cool setting for much of the day during the hot summer season. But another part of the story is likely groundwater seeping through a steep ravine that cuts through the layers of basalt where the branch colony is centered.
The branch colony of the Cedar Island lost forest is thriving on the south wall of the Deschutes River canyon, with many young trees becoming established in this unexpected habitat
Whatever their origin, the younger grove along the canyon wall is a helpful insurance policy for the survival of the Cedar Island colony over the long haul. These are young trees, yet clearly well-established, so in the event the island trees are destroyed by fire or flood, these trees could be a source for re-seeding the island. Likewise, the island might well survive range fires that could destroy the canyon wall grove and help reseed that part of the colony.
This young Incense cedar in the branch colony may someday play a part in reseeding Cedar Island and helping the lost forest here continue to survive
The mystery of the lost forest on Cedar Island brings more questions than answers, and it deserves more study to better understand the phenomenon and help preserve the colony. I’m hoping this article might inspire a local researcher or graduate student (with a passion for rafting or kayaking!) to step up to the challenge. The island is on public land managed by the Bureau of Land Management, and seems reasonably protected from development, though it doesn’t seem to have any sort of special protection for its unique ecological value.
The lost Incense cedar forest on Cedar Island in the Deschutes River canyon
In the meantime, the island makes for an interesting stop on a tour of the lower Deschutes River canyon, whether by car, bicycle or on the river. The island is located immediately downstream from the Beavertail campground. There are pullouts along the access road with good views of the island, and if you’re up for a walk, you can simply park at a pullout and walk the exceptionally scenic road for a stretch.
Along the way, you’ll pass another coniferous anomaly — the “Big Pine” located just north of the twin railroad bridges at Horseshoe Bend. This old Ponderosa pine grows on a gravel fan at the base of seep that gives it enough year-round water to become quite established here. The BLM has placed a picnic table under the tree and there is a toilet nearby, too.
The “Big Pine” just north of the twin railroad bridges along the Deschutes River access road
From the beginning of the well-marked access road near Sherars Bridge, it’s 17 miles to the end of the well-graded gravel road, so this makes a good adventure if you’re looking for something off the beaten path. Map 6 on the following BLM webpage covers the route from Sherars bridge to Cedar Island and Map 7 covers the remainder of the access road to Macks Canyon:
For a deeper dive into the Deschutes Railroad War, you can find out-of-print copies of Leon Speroff’s excellent book on the subject, with dozens of historic photos presented in large, coffee-table format.
Leon Speroff’s excellent book covers the surprising railroad history of the Deschutes in detail — plus some of the natural history of the canyon
The Deschutes River access road can be reached by following the Sherars Bridge Highway (OR 216) from where it joins Highway 197 in Tygh Valley. Follow signs to Grass Valley, then turn onto the well-marked access road about a mile after crossing Sherars Bridge. You’ll pass White River Falls State Park along the way, another worthy stop if you’re in the area.
One of the best times to visit the lower Deschutes is in winter and early spring, when campers and rafters are scarce and you will have the place pretty much to yourself. As with all trips to the dry east side of the mountains, ticks, poison oak and even the occasional rattlesnake are residents here, so watch your step and do a tick check when you get home.
The Riverside Fire shortly after it exploded into a major conflagration in September 2021 (USFS)
In the aftermath of the 49,000-acre Eagle Creek Fire in 2017, we learned the following essential facts:
The fire was human-caused by a careless teenager throwing fireworks over a cliff along the Eagle Creek Trail on a crowded Labor Day weekend with extreme fire conditions. 176 hikers had to be rescued after the fire exploded. The teenager was later sentenced to extensive community service working with forest crews
No human life and minimal loss of structures occurred, despite the close proximity to the town of Cascade Locks and hundreds of homes built in the forest fringes adjacent to the national forest
Though human-caused, the scale and timing of the fire was completely in line with historic large fires in the Gorge, occurring roughly every century. The last major fire on the Oregon side was also centered on the Eagle Creek and Tanner Creek areas, in the late 1800s. The massive Yacolt Burn on the Washington side occurred in 1902
The forest recovery following the fire was immediate, reassuring, and continues without human intervention (in the form of replanting)
The extreme weather conditions and risk for fire was forecast in advance by the National Weather Service, yet this information was not enough to persuade the U.S. Forest Service or the Oregon Parks and Recreation Division to reconsider public access to the Gorge that fateful Labor Day weekend.
Powerful easterly winds drove the massive Riverside Fire west, toward the Willamette Valley (USFS)
Flash forward to 2020, and we have a repeat of the Eagle Creek Fire in the form of the 138,000-acre Riverside Fire, which burned much of the Clackamas and Molalla River watersheds after it started the day after Labor Day:
Like the Eagle Creek Fire, the Riverside Fire was human-caused, as was the 36 Pit Fire that had previously burned 5,500 acres in the lower Clackamas River canyon in September 2014
Like the Eagle Creek Fire in the Gorge, the extreme weather conditions that made the Riverside Fire so explosive were well-predicted and nearly certain to unfold as forecast. We were warned that high winds would blow hot desert air over the Cascade passes in Oregon and Washington, turning mountain canyons into wind tunnels of hot, exceptionally dry air all the way to the Willamette Valley
Like the Eagle Creek Fire, the Riverside burned an area that was probably overdue for fire, as measured by the approximately 100-200 year intervals between large fires on the west slopes of the Cascades. Unlike the Gorge, the Clackamas and Molalla basins had been heavily logged by the Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management and the private timber corporations for 70 years, so much of the burn consisted of crowded clear-cut plantations that turned out to be especially vulnerable to fire
Unlike the Eagle Creek Fire, thousands of acres of private, previously logged-over plantations burned, and the timber corporations have been aggressively “salvaging” burned trees in the months since the fire occurred – a practice that has been shown to be especially damaging to forest recovery
Like the Eagle Creek Fire, towns like Estacada and Molalla were spared, though the fire burned frighteningly close to Estacada. But unlike the Eagle Creek Fire, the Riverside fire destroyed 139 homes and outbuildings and injured four people in its path along the west slope of the Cascades.
Like the Eagle Creek Fire, the Riverside turned skies in the Portland metropolitan area orange for days, raining ash on some of the suburbs, and awakening the urban population to the health and economic impacts that large fires have always had on rural communities.
Memaloose Road after the Riverside Fire (USFS)
When it was over, the Riverside fire had burned nearly three times the area of Eagle Creek Fire. The scale of the fire is still sinking in, since the burn area is largely closed to the public, indefinitely. But the few photos the Forest Service has provided show scenes similar to the Eagle Creek Fire, from severely burned areas where the forest canopy was completely killed to areas of “mosaic” burns, a beneficial fire pattern where intensely burned areas are intermixed with less burned forest, where the tree canopy is likely to survive the fire. Early analysis of the first suggests that it was generally more severe than the Eagle Creek fire, with large areas of the Clackamas River watershed severely burned.
The lower Clackamas River canyon has now burned three times in the past 20 years, first with the Bowl Fire in 2002 that burned 339 acres, then the 36 Pit Fire in 2014, and now the massive Riverside Fire. In this recent article [https://wyeastblog.org/tag/clackamas-river/] I described a forest recovery that was already underway when the Riverside Fire swept the through the lower Clackamas River canyon last fall, and we don’t yet know how much of this recovering forest was burned.
Adjusting to our new reality…
While the Eagle Creek and Riverside fires have much in common, and the fires aren’t necessarily outliers compared to historic fires in the area, there are some important takeaways from both fires that are concerning. They underscore the reality that climate change and increased human presence in our forests are accelerating the pace of major forest fires in the Pacific Northwest.
Fire-scorched Fish Creek Campground (USFS)
First, the recent sequence of fires in the lower Clackamas River Canyon is troubling, as we are now seeing fires burn through the same forests in rapid succession. This means that surviving forest patches from the 2002 Bowl Fire also had to contend with the 2014 16 PIt Fire, and later, the 2020 Riverside Fire to continue the benefits of a “mosaic” burn to the lower canyon. While we don’t yet know, we almost certainly lost some (or perhaps all) of these surviving forests from earlier fires. These are the beneficial mosaic survivors that ensure a rapid forest recovery. Without them, we can expect a much slower forest recovery, and more erosion and earth movement will result.
Second, the Forest Service has shown an inability (or unwillingness) to simply close down recreation areas when extreme fire conditions are forecast. Their position is understandable: closing down the Gorge after the Eagle Creek Fire caused much controversy, so we can only imagine the outrage had that been done before that Labor Day in 2017, though we would almost certainly have prevented the catastrophic fire that resulted. Conversely, prevention is rarely credited in our society, so the likely public relations firestorm of closing the forest on Labor Day weekend to avoid a real firestorm in the forest would have been a truly thankless decision for the Forest Service.
Fish Creek drainage after the fire showing a mosaic burn pattern (USFS)
The same holds for the 2020 Riverside Fire. Closing down the Clackamas River recreation corridor to campers, boaters and hikers on Labor Day weekend would surely have set off a major controversy for the Forest Service, and only in hindsight can we know that it would have prevented a catastrophic fire needlessly caused by humans.
I visited the corridor on a busy weekend just before Labor Day, and I was saddened to see “dispersed” campsites all along the Clackamas with campfires burning, despite a ban on fires at the time. These unofficial campsites have a long history and tradition in our national forests, and they have been mushrooming in new places all around WyEast Country in recent years as campers seek to avoid the fees (and rules) of developed campgrounds. As a result, they are increasingly becoming havens for lawless activity, including tree cutting, dumping and illegal fires.
Mobbed “dispersed” campsite in the Clackamas corridor with multiple campfires burning a few days before the Riverside Fire
The Forest Service simply doesn’t have the capacity to meaningfully enforce fire restrictions in the growing number of dispersed sites, and it’s time we view them as the hazard to our forests that they have become. The agency has begun to close some of these sites, but if we learn that the Riverside Fire was ignited by an illegal campfire in a dispersed campsite, then we’ll have a strong case for completely banning them – everywhere.
Would that cause an outcry? Absolutely. But many tough decisions lie ahead if we hope to save our forests from our own bad behavior during a time of unprecedented environmental change.
Forest Service fire patrol attempting to monitor dispersed campers
Parking overload at a dispersed campsite in the Clackamas Corridor a few days before the Riverside Fire
Private utilities saw the fire situation differently last September. Portland General Electric (PGE) opted to shut down its powerlines in the heavily populated Mount Hood corridor and its three powerhouses and adjoining powerlines in the Clackamas River canyon in anticipation of the wind event, for fear of their power system igniting the forest.
Looking back, there’s no way to know if that would have happened, but the recent fires caused by powerlines in California (and resulting lawsuits against the utilities) surely weighed on PGE’s decision. In that light, the frustration of several thousand customers seemed a fair tradeoff to PGE, especially when you consider that the nearby Beachie Creek Fire and other fires that burned throughout Oregon during that weather event were caused by downed powerlines from the extreme wind.
Crowded clear-cut plantations like this fared poorly in the Riverside Fire (USFS)
Another important take-way is that our forests are becoming increasingly stressed by climate change. Our summers are hotter and longer, our snowpack is retreating to higher elevations and is less abundant. This makes our forests much more vulnerable to fire, especially at the end of our summer drought season in late August and into September. Little is known about how global climate change will ultimately affect our forests, but it’s becoming clear that the fire risk is only increasing and scale and frequency, and our forests on the west slope of the Cascades didn’t evolve for that.
As we move forward into this unsettling future, the real question isn’t whether we can make sound judgments about fire danger based on science and observation. We know we can, and the science is getting better and more reliable all the time. Instead, the question is whether we are willing to follow science to make the tough calls?
For this, we need only look to the global COVID-19 pandemic that we are riding out right now. The science behind basic, simple steps to prevent the transmission of the virus is solid and tested. In many societies, science alone has been persuasive enough to encourage mass compliance with prevention efforts. Not so in our country, of course, where putting on a simple face mask devolved into a debate about individual liberties, even as hundreds of thousands of Americans have died from the coronavirus.
This appears to be “safety” logging by ODOT, not post-fire salvage logging — an increasingly discredited practice (USFS)
However, elected leaders in our corner of the country have been willing to follow the science (and face the angry wrath of a vocal few), and the public has overwhelmingly followed orders to keep our distance, shut down places where people gather and hunker down in our homes during this crisis. As loud as the dissenters are, the vast majority of Oregonians (and Washingtonians) have accepted that there are no good options in this crisis, only “least worst” options. Have we now reached a point with human-caused forest fires in our region that the public is similarly ready (or at least resigned) to accept restrictions based on our collective memory of recent, catastrophic fires?
This brings me back to the notorious month of September in WyEast, the time of year when some of our worst human-caused fires have occurred. It’s pretty clear now that the Forest Service isn’t able (or willing) to pre-emptively shut down forest access during the kind of extreme weather conditions to prevent human-caused fires that allowed the Eagle Creek and Riverside fires to explode. We saw yet another reminder of that fact a few weeks ago, when the Forest Service abruptly and unceremoniously re-opened the Eagle Creek Trail and other areas closed by the Eagle Creek Fire in the middle of the holiday vacation, and social media quickly responded, sending a crush of hikers to the trail.
Whale Creek near Indian Henry Campground after the fire (USFS)
Whale Creek before the fire
With this move, the Forest Service squandered a “reset” on access and crowd management the agency had long promised about since the closure began. Worse, the reopening of the Eagle Creek and other Gorge trails was completely at odds with warnings of COVID-19 spreading rampantly over the holidays. The risk of spreading the virus was exponentially higher in December than it had been in March 2020, when the Forest Service DID shut down trails in the Gorge. After a month of hikers crowding the reopened trail — where it is impossible to observe basic COVID precautions — Mother Nature unleashed a “Pineapple Express” deluge of rain in late January that washed out several sections of trail, closing it once again, though only “temporarily”, according to the Forest Service.
Somebody call the Governor..?
Given what we’ve learned about the inability of the Forest Service bureaucracy to act on solid science from these recent events, and especially given that climate change and our own behavior is only ramping up the fire risk, what if our state and local elected leaders were to step in? Could they make these decisions for the Forest Service in the name of public health and safety? Should they?
Mosaic burn along a section of the Clackamas showing some big trees that survived the fire while the clear-cut plantation in the distance was decimated (USFS)
The answer to the first question is yes, they probably could – especially the Governor. Last spring, the Forest Service closed most of the national forests in the Pacific Northwest in response to the broader COVID-19 shutdowns, and in their official words, did so “in consultation with state and local governments and tribes”. This probably means the national forest shutdown in Oregon and Washington occurred because the two governors had ordered a broader shutdown, as opposed to a president who was denying the pandemic at the time. So, while the governors may not have direct authority over federal lands, they appear to have functional authority (and if there are legal experts out there reading this who can answer this question more definitively, I welcome your thoughts!)
But should our elected leaders step up and make this call? The answer to this question is easy. Yes, of course they should. The pandemic has redefined the boundaries for elected leadership, at least for now. And besides, for most of us, it would be an inconvenience to stay home on Labor Day weekend out of an abundance of caution. For those who lost their homes (or the lives of loved ones) in the Oregon fires last September, it’s an especially easy call. If the pandemic has taught Americans anything, we’ve learned that much of what we do in our daily lives can be adjusted to meet needs greater than our own. As Americans, we reserve the right to complain, of course!
Aerial view of the Oak Grove area of the Clackamas basin showing a mosaic burn pattern and the untouched Roaring River Wilderness and Mount Hood, beyond (USFS)
Finally, how urgent is the need to assert some authority over the Forest Service in making the call for public closures during extreme fire conditions? It’s tempting to think the Gorge is immune from big fires for another century, now that much of the Oregon side was burned in the 2017 fire. But three fires in less than 20 years in the lower Clackamas River corridor tells us otherwise. We’re in a new fire reality, now, and the renewal of our forest depends on our ability to prevent further escalation of the fire cycle due to our own behavior.
Next time… Mount Hood?
And then there’s Mount Hood. The north and east sides burned in a series of three fires from 2005 to 2011, but much of the forest on these flanks of the mountain remains unburned, and is ripe for human caused fire by the throngs of hikers and backpackers who visit the mountain in the summer months.
1933 view of Mount Hood and burned-over Zigzag Mountain from burned-over Devils Peak. Everything in this view except for Mount Hood is now reforested. While large fires are not new to the western Cascades, they are becoming more frequent
More ominously, the south and west sides of the mountain haven’t seen major fires in more than a century. The extensive Kinzel and Sherar fires completely burned off several square miles of the forest, from near Timothy Lake all the way north to Lolo Pass, and from the community of Zigzag east to Bennett Pass. Few people lived near the mountain when these fires burned.
Today’s Mount Hood corridor travels through the middle of this largely recovered burn, and the highway is now lined with thousands of homes and hundreds of businesses and resorts. While PGE’s decision to shut down their powerlines in the Mount Hood corridor last September may well have prevented a fire being ignited from electrical lines, but it’s sheer luck that a human-caused fire didn’t occur.
The escalation of west-side fires calls to question the wisdom of continuing to build homes on the forest fringes, too. While most of these are on private land, they drive public policy, with developers and the real estate industry pushing the idea that forest fires can somehow be prevented in perpetuity. Elected officials have been wary to disagree, despite the science being on their side.
Early 1900s view of Government Camp when the south slopes of Mount Hood were still recovering from the last major fire to sweep through the area
In this emerging era of extreme weather and forests stressed by climate change, catastrophic, human-caused fires are quickly becoming an annual concern, even along the temperate west slope of the Cascades. When extreme fire conditions emerge again next summer, and with the Gorge and Riverside fires in our recent memory, are we finally ready and willing to say “no” to ourselves?
Before the COVID pandemic descended upon us last year, I would have been tempted to say “no” to that question, simply because American culture has struggled in recent years with the idea of the collective interest outweighing the individual. But the pandemic has renewed my optimism that we’re turning a page toward an era more like the 1930s and 40s, when a collective consensus emerged toward facing the dual challenges of economic despair and world war.
Despite our divisive domestic politics of the past few years, a working majority in this country has nevertheless emerged on the side of finally addressing climate change. That’s encouraging! After all, climate change is singularly a global threat that demands our collective effort. With restoring forests as one of the most important tools in combatting climate change, this could be the key to rethinking how we can prevent human-caused fires.
…and to end this article on an even more optimistic note, watch this blog for big news on the future of WyEast Country in the coming days! That’s a teaser, by the way…
As I write this annual year-end post after a calamitous 2020, the world seems just a bit more hopeful. The presidential election will shift public lands policy 180 degrees back toward conservation and restoration, and with the release of two COVID-19 vaccines, the end of the world pandemic is finally on the horizon.
And so, I share some of the stories behind this year’s Mount Hood National Park Campaign scenic calendar with a cautious spring in my step (or my fingers as they type this sentence, at least). You can pick up a copy of the calendar here for $29.95:
As always, all proceeds will go to Trailkeepers of Oregon (TKO) to support their ongoing effort to care for trails as gateways to our public lands. Zazzle prints these calendars with exceptionally high quality, and they also have large enough boxes to be quite functional for tracking important dates and your trail plans. They make nice gifts, too, of course!
Over the years, I’ve described the Mount Hood National Park Campaign as “an idea campaign” with the simple goal of keeping alive the promise of better protections and restoring the grandeur Mount Hood and the Gorge. I started the project in 2004 as a way to continually remind Oregonians and Washingtonians living in WyEast Country that national park protection was proposed at least three times in Congress, in the 1890s, 1920s and the 1930s. Each time, logging and other extraction industries (and later, the emerging ski industry) were the chief opponents — along with the Forest Service, itself.
Thomas Cole painted this idyllic scene of Native American life in WyEast Country in the 1870s. The mountain continues to be beacon of inspiration and awe for people living in its shadow to this day
If you’ve watched Ken Burns’ magnificent National Parks series, you know that every park was a battle, typically between short-term exploitation interests and progressives looking toward posterity for future generations. There were no easy wins.
And, so it will be for Mount Hood and the Gorge until enough locals (or our children and grandchildren) recognize national park protection as both urgent and deserving for these world-class places. We haven’t treated them too well over the past 150 years, but real change is suddenly afoot in 2020. What? Yes, you read that correctly… and I will share more about that exciting news in future blog posts!
This beautiful cove at the foot of Crown Point was called “Echo Bay” when it was still connected to the Columbia River in this 1870s photo. This was among the spots that inspired the first Congressional effort to create a national park here
But until then, this article is a tour of some of the places that make WyEast country special, and are featured in the 2021 MHNP Campaign scenic calendar. As always, every image in the new calendar was captured over the past year and, as in past years, there are some lesser-known places mixed in with some of the more familiar.
The 2021 Calendar Images
Salmon River in late Autumn
The cover image for the 2021 calendar comes from a very familiar spot along the Old Salmon River Trail, near the community of Zigzag. This quiet trail was bypassed — and spared — when the Salmon River Road was built in the post-World War II logging boom. Today it offers one of the most accessible trails into ancient rainforest anywhere in the Pacific Northwest. This photo was taken just a few weeks ago, too. Because of its low elevation, it’s a trail you can hike year-round. Here’s the Oregon Hikers Field Guide description of the trail.
For January, I chose an image captured from above the West Fork Hood River Valley, on Butcher Knife Ridge. In this scene, Mount Hood is emerging from the clouds after the first big winter storm of fall. I’ll be posting more articles in 2021 about the West Fork valley, as there is some very exciting news to share about this area.
Mount Hood’s rugged northwest face in early winter as viewed from Butcher Knife Ridge
The February image is a familiar view of Wahclella Falls on Tanner Creek, one of the premier trails in the Columbia River Gorge. Before the 2017 Eagle Creek Fire, I visited this trail several times each year, as it’s not only a personal favorite, but also a trail that makes for a great introduction to the Gorge for new hikers or visiting family.
Wahclella Falls on Tanner Creek
The image in the new calendar is from a visit last winter, and it was my first since the fire. Though the fire did burn through the lower Tanner Creek canyon, many trees survived, especially around Wahclella Falls. Notably, a pair of big trees familiar to hikers also survived — the twin Douglas firs flanking the lower trail (below). As of this year, their upper canopies are still green more than two years after the fire, and that bodes well for them to survive for many years to come.
The familiar twin Douglas firs along the Wahclella Falls Trail have survived the 2017 Gorge fire… so far
What I couldn’t have guessed is that the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions kicked in just a couple weeks after my visit, and Wahclella Falls was once again closed to the public.
As hard as these Gorge trail closures have been for hikers, there are a couple of silver linings. First, they have allowed trail volunteers from TKO, the Pacific Crest Trail Association (PCTA) and other volunteer trail organization to continue the hard work of restoring trails damaged by fire without having to accommodate hiker traffic. Perhaps more importantly, the closures have also allowed forest recovery to begin within the pressures that heavy visitation on popular Gorge trails brings.
Lower White River Falls in spring
The March image (above) features Lower White River Falls, a lesser-known cascade downstream from the main falls at White River Falls State Park. Where the main falls is a raucous spectacle, the lower falls is quiet waterfall in a secluded canyon, where it is framed by desert wildflowers in late spring.
Poison likes to grow in the shade of boulders along the White River — watch where you sit!
The user path to the lower falls has become increasingly prominent in recent years as more visitors discover this pretty spot (and its excellent swimming hole), but be forewarned, the path is lined with Poison Ivy. This relative of Poison Oak bears a close resemblance, but grows as a ground low ground cover in the sandy floodplain along the river, often in the shelter of boulders and old logs.
Lower White River Falls
For April, I selected another scene from Mount Hood’s rain shadow, a wildflower meadow on the edge of the tree line where forests give way to the desert country east of the Cascades. This bucolic scene looks across the rolling wheat country of Wasco County, toward the Columbia Hills and the Columbia River, on the horizon (below).
Wildflower meadows on the east slope of the Cascades near Friend
Though you wouldn’t know from this photo, the South Valley Fire swept through this area in 2018, one of three major range fires that combined that year to burn nearly 200,000 acres. Two years later, and only the scattered snags of Ponderosa pine, Western juniper and burned fence posts hint at the fire, as the sage and grass savannah has recovered in a remarkably short time. But the fires had a human toll, too. Homes and barns were burned, as well as several historic farmsteads that can never be replaced.
Only a few charred remains tell the story of the 2018 range fires east of Mount Hood
Switching back to the west side of the Cascades, I chose a scene from a visit to Silver Falls State Park for the May image. With many of the Gorge waterfall trails still closed by the aftermath of the Eagle Creek Fire, Silver Falls visitation has exploded over the past couple years, as hikers look for new places to get their waterfall fix.
Visiting Silver Falls State Park is pretty close to a national park experience, as the park is loaded with 1930s Civilian Conservation Corp construction and the Oregon Parks and Recreation Department do an excellent job maintaining and curating the park’s network of scenic trails. Lower South Falls (below, and the May image in the new calendar) and nearby Middle North Falls are favorites among photographers in the park, and they have some similarities. Both begin as a wide curtain of falling water before crashing onto the rocky basalt aprons that make up their base, and both have a trail behind them.
Lower South Falls on Silver Creek
A few years ago, a local Republican legislator introduced a bill proposing National Monument status for Silver Creek. The bill didn’t go anywhere, but it was a nice opportunity to showcase the area and a reminder that seeking national park status can be a bipartisan effort, even in these days of deep political division.
Pandemic-compliant blogger at Silver Creek State Park
Visiting Silver Falls State Park (and most other state parks) in 2020 also meant controlling the COVID-19 virus while huffing and puffing on a buy trail. While I was discouraged by the disregard for masks on my trips to Silver Falls last spring (maybe 1 in 5 had one), there has been a noticeable uptick in mask use in our state parks national forests since. That’s good, because in a year of pandemic shutdowns and closures, the benefits of being outdoors and connecting with nature have never been greater.
Crowds of pandemic-defying hikers at Silver Falls State Park on Memorial Day 2020
For June, I chose a scene from just off the Timberline Trail, along the rim of the White River Canyon (below). This expansive Lupine meadow is only a few steps from the trail, but just out of view and thus known to surprisingly few.
Summer Lupine meadows along the rim of White River canyon
If only this blog had a virtual scratch-and-sniff, as there is nothing quite as heady as the sweetly-scented mountain air in a Lupine meadow, and this one was no exception. For those who haven’t had the experience, Lupine are in the pea family, and have the same sweet aroma as garden sweet peas — but with a mountain backdrop!
For July, I chose another wildflower scene, though this one fits more of a rock garden motif, featuring yellow Buckwheat and purple Penstemmon among the chunks of andesite scattered here. This is the historic Cooper Spur shelter, just off the Timberline Trail on the mountain’s north side. Cooper Spur, proper, rises to the left and the Eliot Glacier tumbles down Mount Hood’s north face to the right of the shelter. This is one of several stone shelters built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the early 1930s and today is one of just three that still survive (the other survivors are at McNeil Point and Cairn Basin).
Cooper Spur Shelter in summer
Follow the climbers trail to the right of the shelter to the nearby moraine viewpoint (marked by large cairn) and you’ll have a front-row view of the Eliot Glacier. While I was there, a house-sized ice blocks suddenly collapsed (below), filling the canyon with a roar! It’s always a thrill to see and hear our glaciers in action.
Icefall collapse on the Eliot Glacier!
Another mountain scene fills out the summer as the August image in the new calendar. This multi-image composite assembles the impossibly massive scene at the western base of the mountain, where the Timberline Trail fords the twin branches of the Muddy Fork (below). From here, the mountain rises more than 7,000 vertical feet above the scene, and dramatic waterfalls tumble down the 800-foot cliffs that frame the canyon.
The wide-open scenery of the Muddy Fork canyon
The Muddy Fork valley is a volatile, continually changing landscape. In the early 2000s, a massive debris flow swept through, felling an entire forest and leaving a 25-foot layer of rock and sand on the valley floor. The Muddy Fork has since carved through the debris, all the way down to the former valley floor, revealing the stumps of trees that were snapped off by the event. Some are visible along the stream at the center the above photo. Meanwhile, the rest of the Muddy Fork debris flow is already dense with Red Alder, Cottonwood and Douglas Fir pioneers that are quickly re-establishing the forest, continuing the eternal cycle of forest renewal.
Several photos in this year’s calendar are from the dry country east of Mount Hood, in the rain shadow of the Cascade Range. I made several trips there while researching the strange desert mounds unique to the area (see “Mystery of the Desert Mounds“) and I fell back in love with the landscape, having spent time living there in the early 1980s. The September image in the new calendar is of a lesser-known gem in this area, the historic Nansene Community Hall (below) located on the northern slopes of Tygh Ridge.
Remains of the historic Nansene Community Hall on Tygh Ridge
The community hall dates back to the early 1900s, when sheep ranching was still the dominant industry in the area. Sprawling wheat fields and cattle have long since replaced the sheep herds, but thanks to the arid climate, abandoned wood structures from the early white settlement era can survive intact for a century or more. But they can’t survive fire, and while many historic homestead structures were destroyed by the 2018 range fires that swept through the area, Nansene Hall was among those spared.
Thankfully, the iconic grain elevator at Boyd survived the fire, too, and this photo (below) was a candidate for the calendar, save for the fact that Mount Hood isn’t peeking over the horizon!
Grain elevator on Fifteenmile Creek at Boyd
Several historic schoolhouses in the area also survived the fire, including the picturesque Center Ridge Schoolhouse (below), located a couple miles northeast of the Nansene Commumity Hall. This amazingly intact old building was designed with more aesthetics in mind than you might guess. The big windows along the west side of the structure define its single classroom, but the building was sited at an angle to ensure that Mount Hood filled the horizon through those windows, while Mount Adams looms to the north of its playground!
Center Ridge Schoolhouse and Mount Adams
While exploring the Tygh Ridge area this year, I happened upon a toxic creature that was unknown to me: the Green Blister Beetle (below), part of the legendary family of bugs that Spanish Fly is derived from. This iridescent native of the western states is highly toxic to the touch, though I only learned that later, when I was trying to identify this bug from photos I had taken while surrounded by a swarm of them in the field!
Don’t touch the Green Blister Beetle! (though the smaller beetles in this photo don’t seem to be bothered by their toxic neighbor)
Fortunately, I did not handle them, as that can lead to a potentially dangerous reaction. So, while we don’t have many toxic plants and creatures to navigate in the Pacific Northwest, here’s a new one for the list of those to avoid.
The Blister Beetle confab was unfolding in the historic Kingsley Catholic Cemetery, one of the more photogenic spots in the Tygh Ridge area. While walking among the pioneer graves that day last June, I also spotted this wonderful note hanging from a tree, a most welcome bit of hope and optimism in an otherwise grim pandemic year:
Sometimes a simple note can make a tough year a little better…
I later shared the note with a friend in the Dufur area, who in turn shared it in local circles there, hopefully drawing some interest. Little discoveries like this are poignant reminders that the future is always bright through young eyes, and it’s our job as elders to embrace their optimism and sense of promise.
For October, I selected a scene familiar to many (below). This is the view from just below the Vista Ridge trailhead, where the mountain suddenly unfolds for arriving hikers. It’s a popular roadside spot for evening photography, especially in fall when Vine Maple light up the scene.
The popular photographers’ tableau at Vista Ridge
However… when I stopped there this fall, I was quite annoyed to see that Forest Service contractors hired to brush out the road had dumped their slash right in the middle of this lovely talus slope! Sacrilege! So, I took a deep breath, put on a pair of gloves and spent a couple hours dragging the slash down the road to another debris pile that was out of view in a nearby wooded area.
Aargh!
Sacrilegious!
Why get my dander up over this? Because talus slopes are special. They’re scenic and offer welcome views in our heavily forested region, of course. But they’re also home to species that depend on these unique places to survive. The best known are the tiny Pika who live exclusively in talus fields, but they are just part of the unique web of plants and animals found in these rocky islands. They deserve to be revered as unique places in the same way that our understanding of deserts has evolved in recent years to see them as places full of life, despite their lack of trees.
For November, I went back to yet another image from the slopes of Tygh Ridge (below). This is a view looking north across the broad, gentle apron of the ridge toward Mount Adams, shining on the far horizon. Less obvious in this autumn view are the many fallow fields where wheat was once planted, but now are carpeted with wildflowers and native grasses. What gives?
Tygh Ridge Locust trees frame Mount Adams
This photo (below) from a nearby spot was taken in June, and shows the expansive meadows that now cover formerly plowed land on Tygh Ridge. It turns out that these areas have been allowed to recover with native grassland species to benefit wildlife as part of the federal Conservation Reserve Program. It’s an opt-in program that compensates farmers for making long-term commitments (typically 10 or 15 years) to leave fields fallow for wildlife recovery. Hundreds of acres on Tygh Ridge are now part of this program.
Lupine meadows on Tygh Ridge are part of the Conservation Reserve Program that compensates famers for allowing fields to revert to natural cover to benefit wildlife
Heading back to the west side for December, I chose another image from beautiful Silver Falls State Park, though not of one of the iconic waterfalls. Instead, this scene (below) captures a classic winter rainforest scene, with the bare, contorted limbs of moss-draped Bigleaf maple revealed, now that their summer jacket of leaves has been discarded for the winter.
North Fork Silver Creek in winter
With all of the tragedy and trauma that 2020 brought to the world, this simple scene seemed most appropriate for closing out the calendar for the coming year: calming, cool and reflective, and with a needed sense of order and eternity that a misty day in the rainforest can bring us.
Remembering 2020..?
Riverside Fire exploding into a conflagration in September
Assembling this year’s calendar was yet another reminder of the horrendous year we are leaving behind. While spending time in the outdoors is always a needed escape, in 2020 we suddenly found many of our favorite forest sanctuaries closed by COVID-19. Later, the massive Riverside and Beachie fires roared through the Clackamas and Mount Jefferson areas, perhaps closing them for years to come, and with little known about the full impact of these fires at this time.
As I sorted through about 130 images that I’d set aside over the year, everything fell into two categories: burned in the fires or not. We still don’t know just how extensively the Riverside Fire burned the Molalla River watershed, for example, though we do know that it reached all the way to the Willamette Valley, causing evacuations in several communities on the valley floor — an unthinkable development in our recent history with fire. The Molalla River corridor remains closed, and it could be years before the Bureau of Land Management reopens the area to the public.
The Molalla Eye… before the fire
Some spots were spared, if just barely. Just south of the Molalla corridor, the Riverside and Beachie fires converged and bolted Silver Falls State Park. The park was spared, but not nearby Shellburg Falls, which was intensely burned, with no surviving forest. The Little North Fork valley was equally charred, including historic structures at Opal Creek.
Upper Butte Creek Falls… spared by the fire
Meanwhile, the fires followed ridgetops above Abiqua and Butte Creeks, but left the waterfalls and big trees there intact. Butte Creek was on my mind, as I had just made a trip there last June, when I ran into a family learning to fly fish at Upper Butte Creek Falls. While this spot didn’t burn, it will still likely be affected by the fires. As we’ve learned following the 2017 Eagle Creek Fire in the Gorge, stream corridors spared by the actual fire will soon fill with logs downed by the burn, and this will likely be the case in places like Butte Creek in coming years.
Fishing at Butte Creek
I’ve posted many articles about fire, and our need to come to terms with both its inevitability and benefits. And while it was frustrating to learn that the Riverside Fire was — once again — human-caused, it’s also the case that the forest will recover. With that recovery comes opportunities to rethink how we manage the Clackamas River watershed, and I’ll be posting more on that topic in the coming year. If catastrophic fires are a reset for the forest, then they can also be a reset for how we manage them.
While the wildfires took center stage in Oregon in September, the COVID-19 crisis is the tragedy that will forever mark 2020. Like many, social distancing took me outdoors, but I quickly found that my usual haunts were packed with people, and too many were without masks or observing basic precautions for preventing transmission of the virus.
So, I ventured a bit farther afield in WyEast country, visiting several places for the very first time, but also taking great pains not to interact with others and risk accidentally being a spreader, myself. Once such place was Cliffs Park, a remarkable spot along the Columbia River that offers a stunning view of the Columbia River. On a quiet Sunday, I had the place to myself, but the empty fishing platforms were a reminder that indigenous peoples have been fishing these beaches for millennia — and that in our pandemic, Native Americans have been among the hardest hit by the virus.
Tribal fishing platforms at Cliffs Park
Cliffs Park
Looking downstream at Cliffs Park, WyEast rises above the basalt walls of the Gorge, and the scene seems timeless. Turn around and look upstream, and the John Day Dam fills the horizon, another reminder of the cultural devastation that white settlement brought to the indigenous societies that had flourished along the river for millennia — and the trauma they still carry from the loss of Celilo Falls, just downstream from Cliffs Park, and inundated by The Dalles Dam in 1957. This recent piece in Portland Monthly on the subject is well worth reading:
It’s fairly easy to be socially distant (and completely alone) in the wide-open desert country east of Mount Hood, but what about some pandemic solitude on the mountain? It turns out to be in plain sight, if you’re willing to do some boulder-hopping. Over the summer, I made several cross-country forays into the White River flood zone, and to my surprise, the river channel abruptly changed sometime in late summer, before my final visit in late September.
The White River strikes back… again!
My guess is that a cloudburst or just some steady rain had kicked off a debris slide far up the canyon, but the volume was such that the entire floodplain was affected, with a couple feet of new sand and cobbles left behind by the flood. On my visit, the river was still trying to find its new course, and made a wonderful clattering noise it rocks and pebbles rolled down the stream in the muddy water.
The White River finding its new path
It’s not the first time the White River has changed course, that’s for sure, and it certainly won’t be the last. Seeing the raw forces of nature steadily at work was also quite reassuring. Yes, humanity has been struggling with a pandemic this year, but the mountain didn’t even notice. Nature has a way of putting our human frailty in helpful perspective, and reminding us that we’re temporary features here.
And, on a personal note…
Everyone has their list of reasons to hate 2020, and I certainly have mine. I’ll start with an odd one that connects some dots, and it’s about my photography. After decades of making some of the most innovative, compact cameras that seemed to be designed with hikers and active photographers in mind, Olympus announced last June that it would be selling off its camera division. What..??
It turns out that like all traditional camera makers, Olympus had seen sales sag with the explosion of smartphone and their amazingly good photo capability. No surprise, there, and I’m no exception. I marvel at what my iPhone can do. But I’ve also been a loyal Olympus user since I was 18 years old.
End of an era for this photographer? Not a chance! My newest Olympus (complete with collapsing 14-45mm zoom lens) sitting in the palm of my hand…
The good news is that the buyer of the Olympus line is planning to continue offering a full lineup under the old brand name, so we’ll see how that goes. But in the meantime, I used this troubling news as rationale to double down and pick up a few lenses and another camera body that will help me keep this blog full of photos for years to come!
Here’s where I will connect some dots, as the Olympus news had deeper significance with me, as I got the photography bug from my oldest brother Pete, who died in 2017. Pete is on my mind whenever I’m out in the forest or up in the mountains shooting with my beloved Olympus cameras. He helped me pick out my first Olympus camera when I was a teenager.
Me (left) as a 20-year old with my late brother Pete and my first Olympus way back in 1982. Pete was my photography inspiration and my mentor
Pete and I had a special connection that went beyond photography, and I’m thankful for the time I had with him, but I’m especially thankful for the time I still have to be out exploring the world. I’d wish he could still join me, and after losing him, I’ll surely never take my time on this earth for granted again.
This regrettable year also marked the passing of my dad on September 1. He was 91 years old, and like my brother Pete, had a huge impact on my life. Dad moved our family out here from Iowa in 1962, just few weeks before I was added as the last of five kids (and the only one born in Oregon). Dad was drawn to the Pacific Northwest by the active outdoor life, and passed that appreciation on to his kids — and to my mom, who passed away in September 2018. Together, they climbed mountains, backpacked, camped, fished and when it came time to retire, lived out their years on a forested hilltop.
My folks enjoying a pitcher and pizza just three years ago, in September 2017. These transplanted Iowans gave me my love of the Pacific Northwest outdoors
Needless to say, my life moving forward has changed forever with the loss of both parents and my oldest brother. But if every kid wants to make their family proud, I felt good when it came time to sort through the things my folks left behind. Their home was full of photographs, sketches and sculptures that I’d made for them over the years, and they had even saved every Mount Hood calendar I’d printed since starting these in 2004!
So, I know they were pleased that they had successfully planted that outdoor life and conservation ethic in me, and whatever I can do as a conservationist and advocate in my remaining life, it will be an extension of their influence — and Pete’s, too. I’ll always miss them, but whenever I’m in the outdoors, I’m really still with them!
Their passing is also a reminder to me (and all of us) that an essential part of being a conservationist and steward for our public lands is to pass along that ethic and passion to those who will follow us, a role that is now even more prominent in my own mind.
Looking forward to 2021!
What’s coming in 2021 for this blog? As always, I have lots of articles underway, and as I mentioned at the top, the potential for some very big news for the mountain. I will post on that topic as soon as I learn more. I also hope to see some of the Riverside Fire aftermath first-hand and report on what the Clackamas watershed looks like today, along with ongoing visits to some lesser-known spots in WyEast country.
The author at Lower White River Falls in June (with mask in stored position!)
Most of all, a return to life beyond the pandemic is on all of our minds, perhaps as soon as next summer. Until then, thanks for reading the blog and for indulging me in these annual reflections. Best to you in 2021, and I hope to see you on the trail, sometime!
Author’s note: I started this article two year ago, and set it aside because of the conflicting emotions I had from the experience described here. I’ve thought a lot about how I reacted since then. Over the past few weeks, as I watched the Riverside Fire sweep through the Molalla River canyon, memories of the event in 2018 flowed back, once again. Hopefully, a couple of years of reflection will make this a more thoughtful retelling of the story.
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We live in a cruel time. Politics of fear, rage and blind ideology are stoked by countless streams of media in the endless 24-hour cycles of “news” that has little to do with our everyday lives. All of this is relentlessly boiled up daily and served as a toxic brew that feeds directly into our country’s social unrest. But the constant drumbeat is designed to make us think otherwise, of course, and to entice us tune in for another day of advertising wrapped in more fear and loathing. It’s exhausting, overwhelming and discouraging, no matter your political outlook.
So, what’s the connection to this blog? It’s in the cure. In the Pacific Northwest, we are gifted with an escape hatch from this media overload with the greatest concentration and diversity of public lands in the world. These public spaces provide us with a blissful retreat from the daily onslaught coming from cable news, talk radio and social media.
Like most, my time in the woods is almost always spent decompressing from these social stressors, and the everyday pressures of life. That’s why I spent several weekends in the spring of 2018 in the Molalla River corridor, an area that I hadn’t really explored before. It’s a strip of Bureau of Land Management (BLM) land that was assembled through land swaps with private timber companies in the 1990s, and is now fully dedicated to recreation and forest restoration.
Molalla River Canyon in Spring
Most who visit the corridor are there to fish, explore the many mountain bike trails, swim in the crystal-clear Molalla River or simply enjoy the scenic drive. I went there in the off-season to take to beautiful rainforest scenery as spring foliage was just beginning to emerge. Much of the forest in the Molalla River corridor is recovering from century-old logging. The rebound is breathtaking and inspiring, despite the heavy logging that continues in the upper slopes of the watershed on land still owned by the timber companies.
We don’t yet know how the Riverside Fire changed the landscape in the Molalla River canyon when it swept through last month, but there’s a good chance that this riparian corridor experienced a mosaic burn, where patches of surviving forest remain among more severely burned forests. I’ll report back on that once we the smoke has cleared and we can better understand the full impact of the fire on the forest.
A change in plans…
And so, I was heading back into the Molalla River corridor on that lonely, rainy Sunday morning in 2018 to photograph the forest scenery in a couple of favorite spots I had found on previous visits. Oddly, I had passed a BLM ranger parked at one of the closed picnic sites, which surprised me on an early spring weekend. Otherwise, I had the place to myself.
Then I came upon a man lying in the middle of the road.
At first, I thought he might be a cyclist who had been struck by a car. The corridor has miles of developed mountain bike trails, but there was no bicycle in sight, nor any vehicle. Had the man in the road been hit and left there? Was he even alive? My heart was pounding as I pulled up. Then, to my relief, the man began waving for help. Thankfully, he was alive! But a wave of fear swept over me as to what his injuries might be.
I jumped from my car and yelled to him, “Are you okay?”
“Yes, but I broke my leg”, he answered, lifting himself awkwardly onto one elbow.
The man looked to be in his mid-30s. His leg was badly broken, and worse, his head was bleeding steadily from just above his left eye. He was lying on wet pavement in blue jeans and a denim jacket, both completely soaked by the steady rain. I was now very concerned about the seriousness of his injuries and whether this man was going into shock.
I ran back to the car to get a fleece blanket to cover him and asked him his name.
With a heavy accent, he said “Daniel. Daniel Hernández” offering me his wallet and identification, as if I’d asked to see it.
Now, this was not the man’s real name. I’ve simply chosen a common Hispanic surname to reflect his ethnicity, as this is central to the story.
“I fell off the cliff and broke my leg” he said, pointing at the 70-foot escarpment directly above the road. Then, quietly repeating to himself, “Damn, that was stupid… I can’t be missing work for this…”.
Kneeling there in the rain beside him, I was struck that he felt I needed to see his identification as he lay there, badly injured. As if he had to justify his presence to me, a bystander and complete stranger.
The brushy cliff Daniel Hernández fell from…
I wrapped Daniel in the blanket, and told him I had no cell service in the canyon, but that I had seen a BLM ranger a couple miles back, and wanted to drive back to try to catch him. Daniel nodded and asked if I had water for him to drink. I found a plastic cup in the car and left him on the road shivering and sipping water. It felt terrible to leave him behind, but I didn’t dare move him, and the BLM ranger might still be there and have a field radio. I could only hope that Daniel wouldn’t go into shock while I went for help, or even be hit by a car.
As I started to pull away to find help, a blue minivan suddenly appeared from the opposite direction, driving very slowly — warily — down the canyon toward us. The lone, older man inside kept his window up as he approached us, and clearly did not intend to stop. This shocked and angered me, and I jumped back out and waved him down anyway, actually stepping in front of his vehicle. He rolled his window down a few inches, and I asked him to simply stay there to keep an eye on Daniel so that I could go for help.
The man in the blue minivan reluctantly nodded, never saying a word to me or even looking me directly in the eye. He rolled his window back up and full ahead, finally stopping his vehicle a fair distance down the road. This left Daniel lying unprotected on the pavement, 30 feet behind him. The old man was clearly fearful and didn’t want to get involved, which made me both angry and sad. I didn’t blame him for being afraid, and yet his cold indifference was infuriating. Yes, it was a scary situation, but also a very human one. Couldn’t he see that?
I jumped back in my car and raced back down the corridor to the spot where the BLM ranger had been parked, just over a mile from where Daniel lay. I felt a wave of relief to round the final corner and see the ranger loading up his truck. I pulled right up to him, startling him, I think, and told him what was unfolding just up the road. He was a young man in his 20s, but clearly knew what to do. He immediately jumped in his truck and followed me back up the road to the spot where I had left Daniel.
Where I found Daniel Hernández lying on the road. He had tumbled from the steep cliff to the left, landing in water in the ditch, and then dragged himself onto the road in hopes of being spotted by a passing car
As we approached the spot, the old man in the blue minivan quickly pulled away before we had even reached Daniel, without a word or gesture, even when I waved to him. He didn’t roll down his window or even make eye contact as he drove away. This mostly made me sad. I felt sorry for the old man, now.
The incident now took another scary turn as the BLM ranger struggled to get a 911 call out on his radio. This is apparently an ongoing problem for law enforcement and rescue within the walls of the Molalla River Canyon. He spent an agonizing 20 minutes before he finally got through, and the rain continued to fall.
While the BLM ranger worked his radio, I knelt down by Daniel to ask how he was doing.
“Okay” he replied.
“So, what were you doing up there?” I asked, immediately realizing that I sounded more suspicious than curious.
“I just needed to get out here for some peace and quiet, man. I was exploring that trail and tried to get a look at the river, and the ground just gave way”, he said, pointing to a spot at the top of the cliff where you could see the path of his fall through broken brush and ferns.
“Where’s your car?” I asked.
“Down the road, it’s a white van where the trail starts”, he said.
At this point, the BLM ranger had made radio contact, and called out that an ambulance from nearby Molalla was on the way. He then walked over to us, and stood several feet from where Daniel lay, asking him a similar series of questions, though through the lens of law enforcement. That’s one of the roles a ranger plays on our public lands, and he had clearly seen more than his share of unlawful activity in the corridor. But it was also true that Daniel was presumed suspect, even as he lay badly injured on the road.
In that moment, another wave of unexpected fear passed through me. Had I been naïve in trying to help Daniel? Had I put myself in real danger by stopping to help him?
Daniel offered the ranger his wallet, just as he had offered it to me. The ranger took it, looked at Daniel’s identification, then handed it back. Daniel had been laying there for at least an hour at that point, and was shaking. He asked if one of us had a cigarette. The ranger frowned and said “sorry”. I told Daniel I didn’t have a cigarette, either.
I kneeled there, talking with Daniel for the next 20 minutes as we waited for the ambulance. He was staying with friends near Molalla, and visited the corridor frequently to “get away”. That’s why I was there, too, after all. Yet, the ranger’s suspicion had me wondering about Daniel’s story, now. Daniel continued to quietly lament and blame himself for his fall, wondering how he would manage paying medical bills and the work missed from his injuries. He was genuinely distraught, and as he spoke, the fear and distrust about who he was that had crept into my own mind began to melt away, once again. He was just like me, right?
As we sat there in the rain, me next to Daniel and the ranger back in his truck monitoring the radio, it hit to me that Daniel wasn’t just like me at all. He had none of the security that I so take for granted in life — financial, social and even basic equipment for being in the outdoor. His life was completely different than mine, though we had both come to the forest that day to fulfill the same basic need to recharge and find some peace. Despite our very different worlds, we both needed to step away from life’s troubles and reconnect with nature. It was yet another reminder of the cruel times and divided society we live in, creeping into the sacred public refuge of the Molalla River rainforest.
BLM Ranger and Molalla Rescue workers on the scene in April 2018
Finally, we heard both an ambulance and fire engine racing up the road, and I reached out to shake Daniel’s muddy hand to wish him well. Blood was streaked down the side of his soaked face from the wound on his forehead. He squeezed my hand hard, and I felt good about making a human connection with him — even as I secretly felt ashamed of the moments of fear and suspicion that had flashed through my mind since I first found Daniel lying on the road.
When the ambulance pulled up, another wave of relief swept over me. My worst fear had been for Daniel to go into shock, and though I have a fair amount of first aid training, the idea of actually having to treat someone with serious injuries and going in shock really scared me. The rescue workers took over, checking Daniel’s condition and preparing to load him into their ambulance. Once again, Daniel offered up his now soaked wallet and identification, without being asked, and I finally realized this was a familiar, regular ritual for him.
While the rescue team worked with Daniel, I stepped back to chat with the BLM ranger. He could have been me 30 years ago — blond, outdoorsy, just out of college and looking for a career in public lands. He talked about how lawlessness was an ongoing struggle in the corridor for his agency. Despite the popularity of the area, there is still a fair amount of illegal activity, and the BLM is woefully understaffed and unable to provide a consistent presence there.
Rescue workers on the scene helping Daniel Hernández in April 2018
It was hard to hear such a young, enthusiastic person sound so jaded about those realities, but such is the nature of the work. And yet, it was the fact that Daniel fit a certain profile to the ranger that was most sad to me. Had I been laying on the road, I’m quite sure the reaction would have been different. Because the ranger was just like me… and Daniel was not.
When Daniel had been loaded onto a gurney and moved into the ambulance, I waved at the departing contingent of emergency vehicles and the BLM ranger. Daniel was safe, now, though his troubles in his life brought on by the fall had surely only begun. I’ll never know. We just two strangers brought together for a couple unexpected hours.
After everyone had left, I started back up the Molalla River canyon for an afternoon of soaking up the rainforest beauty. But the incident had rattled me beyond the initial shock of finding a badly injured man in the middle of a road. I spent most of that day reflecting — and regretting — my own feelings and suspicions that had emerged that morning.
The “Molalla Eye” formation along the Molalla River
On the way out that evening, I was startled to see Daniel’s white van, parked exactly where he said it would be. It was a beat-up 1980s panel van with a temporary license taped inside the rear window. Once again, my suspicions and fears surged at the sight of the old van. It looked sketchy. But why should it have mattered? Nonetheless, it did, because that judgement was in my subconscious, too.
Then I remembered Daniel’s words: “Damn, that was stupid… I can’t be missing work for this…”. I thought about him, probably in a hospital ER at that moment, running up a tab and facing weeks without work. I thought him squeezing my hand. Did he have a family or friends to help him out? Who would come get his van?
We all like to think we’re above our fears and biases, but this was one of those moments when they reared up for me, unexpected and unwelcome. How little we know about ourselves until we are pushed outside our comfort zones, and how very jarring those hidden feelings can be when they emerge.
And so, I resumed stewing about these many conflicting emotions for the long, rainy drive home in the dark that night… and for the next couple years.
* * * * * * *
I shared this story with friends and family through social media the next day, and received all manner of unexpected praise that I certainly wasn’t looking for. This only made me feel more uncomfortable and ashamed of the mixed emotions I had felt. Yes, I had helped this man, but in the moment, I had also moved toward fear and suspicion at the slightest suggestion. These are details I had not shared in my retelling at the time, and wished I had. It felt hollow and disingenuous, and I wished I had kept the entire story to myself.
Winter rainforest scene in the Molalla River Canyon
So, I tucked away my notes and thoughts about the incident, periodically picking it up over the past two years and trying to figure out why it had impacted me so. Then the video of the brutal killing of George Floyd by a white Minneapolis police officer swept across our already fraught social landscape last May. For so many Americans, it crystalized an urgency to finally confront the racial divides that continue to plague our society. It forced the question, “what can we do as individuals to finally end this?”
For me, the George Floyd murder took me back to Daniel Hernández. Yes, the situation was very different, but the same underlying current was there: an injured Hispanic man feeling obliged to hand over his documentation — his right to be there — to a white bystander, to a white law enforcement officer and to white emergency responders. Daniel knows he belongs to an underclass in our society, and he knew his fate that day depended on navigating the assumptions that white strangers make about him every day. That includes me, the BLM ranger, and rescue unit… and the suspicious old man in the blue minivan.
What can I do? Small steps…
Since that incident in 2018, I had been actively examining my own unconscious biases and looking for ways to be a better social advocate and ally for change, as I clearly have some unconscious biases that need to be worked through. This blog is about our public lands in WyEast Country, so I would like to share how I am putting those ideas to work when I’m out in the forest. They are very small steps, but the old trail analogy applies: a few small steps are how we begin any important journey in our lives.
For me, one overdue step was to simply get to know Hispanic culture, since this represents the largest and fastest growing minority population in Oregon (and across the country). I’m an Oregon native, and yet I knew embarrassingly little about this rapidly growing part of the Oregon family, much less the longer Hispanic history of the West that preceded white migration and settlement.
Lone kayaker on the Molalla River in early Spring
So, I decided to learn Spanish. This continues to be a choppy work in progress that has been both humbling and hopeful, but one that I remain committed to. This first step was suggested to me by a Hispanic co-worker who had immigrated to Oregon in the 1990s, and described how welcoming and inclusive it felt when an English speaker would greet her in Spanish, and even attempt a conversation, depending on their Spanish skills.
I was nervous about this idea at first, as it seemed presumptuous and perhaps even racist. Who am I to presume someone is Hispanic based on appearance or even overhearing them speak? But she was exactly right. I gave it a try, and the reaction has almost always the same: friendly and appreciative. Now, when I run into Spanish speakers on the trail, I greet them as I do everyone, but instead of “Hi”, it’s “¡Hola!” I don’t know for sure, but I suspect part of the surprise is hearing a greeting in Spanish from me, a decidedly old white guy who might not seem like a friendly face in today’s racially divisive culture. But this makes it even more rewarding for me!
Earlier this year, on a very busy Memorial Day at Silver Falls State Park, I passed dozens of hikers, including many Hispanic families. Sometimes there was a moment of surprise when I would greet them in Spanish — whois this old white dude greeting me in Spanish? But then faces would typically light up, especially from parents with young kids, and I would get an enthusiastic “¡Hola!” and “¿Cómo estás?” (“How are you?”). And I would reply “Muy bien” (“Very good”) … and then I’d have to switch to English and point out that my Spanish is pretty terrible, but I’m working on it! Even that admission usually brings broad smiles, which is doubly rewarding.
I wish I had figured this out a long time ago, but I’m thankful my Hispanic friend encouraged me take this small step. She as right, and it turns out to be much more important step than I’d imagined.
Unnamed tributary to the Molalla flowing through a Red alder bog
In our mind’s eye, we imagine that everyone else sees us as the enlightened human beings we aspire to be, exactly equal to everyone else. But I’m learning that being white brings along heavy baggage when it comes to meeting black and brown people on our public lands. We know this because of extensive research on the subject than runs across the spectrum of people of color. But if you are a white person wants to believe that you are welcoming and without bias, it can be hard to accept this truth.
So, if I want to be part of changing that legacy, it means owning the reality that my being white is a highly privileged status in our society, and rethinking how I interact with people of color when I’m out on the trail is how I can be part of changing that injustice.
Public lands are for everyone? Not quite…
By the year 2040, our country is expected to be “majority minority”, thanks to the large and diverse Millennial generation coming of age, and an even more diverse Zoomer generation, right behind them. Whites will still make up the largest racial category for decades to come, but we will become just another minority in the larger, increasingly diverse population. So, that means the racial tensions that stem from a white majority will resolve themselves over time… right?
Possibly. But here’s the concerning news for the present: public lands continue to the be the overwhelming realm of white people, with a much less diverse cross-section of visitors compared to the overall population. The chart below from Resources for the Future shows the wide discrepancy:
Why is this? Partly culture and tradition, but research shows that most people of color fear hostility and open racism when visiting our public lands — including those who actively hike, camp and fish there, despite their apprehensions. Think about that: people of color seeking the same release from societal pressures that white people seek with time spent in nature are denied that because of the color of their skin.
This unjust reality is well documented in research and should be an urgent wake-up call. Research shows people of color reporting reactions of surprise and stares from white people they encounter on the trail, which carries an unmistakable (however unintended) message of “what are YOU doing out here? Many have outright racism, as well. This is real and it’s unacceptable.
I’d like to think that very few white people behave this way intentionally, but the good news is that remedy is very simple: be welcoming. A smile and a friendly “Hello!” is an easy enough start. If you’re hopelessly introverted, just a warm smile or wave will also do. Still friendlier options are “Beautiful day!” or “Isn’t it beautiful out here?”. These are easy greetings to offer, and I always leave every hiker I pass with “Have a great hike!”. This welcoming ethic should apply to every other activity on our public lands, of course.
Sometimes, you’ll get no response, but that happens when I greet other white people, too. Given the current reality for people of color on our public lands, I believe white people like me have an obligation to be part of the solution. It’s a pretty small step that anyone can take — and should.
Mossy winter scene along the Molalla River
I may not be able to stop racist taunts from happening (something far too many people of color report from their experiences on our public lands, sadly), but at least I can show that as white individual, I’m committed to a different, more egalitarian future. That’s also the connection to the broader movement happening in our country, too. We can all make a difference by learning and rethinking about our own actions in everyday life. Being welcoming is a small but important step we can all take, whether on a trail, or anywhere.
____________
“e·gal·i·tar·i·an
adjective
1. relating to or believing in the principle that all people are equal and deserve equal rights and opportunities.
“a fairer, more egalitarian society”
noun
1. a person who advocates or supports egalitarian principles.
____________
There’s also a serious conservation concern that stems from the lack of diversity on our public lands, too. If our country will soon be majority minority, and people of color have not been welcomed on our public lands, then we’re headed for a time when only a few privileged white Americans will be truly invested in conserving our natural landscapes.
I’ve been a lifelong advocate for trails public lands because they’re an egalitarian gateway to nature. While we might argue about exactly how to manage our public lands, spending time out there ensures that we all value them as special, essential spaces in our lives. Resolving to become more welcoming to people of color on our public lands has special importance in this respect. Extending a greeting is not just a welcome, it’s also a validation that acknowledges another person’s right to be there, that we ALL own these lands and we are all responsible for passing them along to the next generation. When you think about it, that’s a profoundly unifying responsibility and common purpose that could go a long way in healing a fractured society.
* * * * * * *
And this takes me back to Daniel Hernández. I finally figured out that what bothered me most about that incident in the Molalla River corridor back in 2018. Where I felt a perfect right to be out in the forest that day, Daniel knew that he didn’t share that right. On paper, perhaps, but every white person he encountered that day also carried the implicit right — privilege — to judge his motives for being there, and therefore his basic right. And while I did want to help him, I was also part of that judging, even if for a few moments of doubt and fear.
As a white person, justifying my right to be somewhere is a burden I will never have to carry. But it’s also privilege I don’t have to exercise. That’s why I’m committed to changing my own interactions with brown and black people in whatever years I have left on this planet. For me, that starts with learning, listening and questioning my own behavior, and then accepting and welcoming all who are out there soaking of the forest, just like me.
Shotgun falls, one of many hidden waterfalls in the Molalla River Canyon
Our public lands are a priceless gift from generations before us, and for so many, they are an essential refuge from life’s burdens. Now, the task is to ensure the survival of our public lands by ensuring that all Americans can experience the same joy, freedom and sense of peace they offer. It’s the egalitarian promise of our public lands. I believe we all have a responsibility to realize that promise, and the time is right now.
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I know this article is long and a bit of a departure from what I usually write about on this blog, but if you’ve read this far, I appreciate you taking the time. It’s a tough subject to confront, and you may not even agree with my conclusions. But I’m always thankful for the opportunity to share my own experience with reflections with folks who share my love for WyEast Country!
Here are some resources on the topic that I found helpful, but there is much more out there on the subject that’s both informative and transformative:
“The Barlow Cutoff” by William Henry Jackson (1930)
One of the loneliest landmarks in WyEast Country is approaching the century mark, and while the years have not been kind, it’s a spot that deserves to be preserved. The place is the Pioneer Woman’s Grave, located along a long-bypassed section of the original Mount Hood Loop Highway.
Roadbuilders discovered the grave in 1924 while building the original loop road. The grave was marked by an old wagon tongue and the remains of a woman were buried in a makeshift box built from wagon sideboards. Based on oral histories from Barlow Road tollgate operators, some historians believe this woman was survived by her husband and two young children, who continued on to the Willamette Valley after burying her here in the mid-1840s.
The Pioneer Woman’s Grave is just off OR 35 where a surviving section of the original Mount Hood Loop Highway heads off into the forest
The grave is located just east of the busy US 26/OR 35 interchange, where a small, brown sign along modern OR 35 points to the historic site along a scenic and surprisingly well-preserved section of the original highway route. Today, the site is underwhelming, to say the least. The grave is marked by a haphazard pile of stones on the shoulder of the old road, and “graced” with all manner of ephemera left by visitors.
Pioneer Woman’s Grave in 2020
Several years ago, the Forest Service installed a new interpretive sign broadly describing the origins of the grave, but without much cultural context or detail. The sign is mounted in a heavy timber frame that gives a nod to a much larger, carved version built here in the 1930s.
Relatively new Forest Service interpretive sign at the Pioneer Woman’s Grave
A brass plaque near the grave was placed here by the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR), a non-profit organization that maintains historic markers around Oregon (and the country). The original plaque was installed on the grave, itself. The current plaque was moved to a boulder a few feet from the grave in 1982.
D.A.R. plaque at the Pioneer Woman’s Grave
D.A.R. plaque at the Pioneer Woman’s Grave
Beyond the signs and plaques, the Pioneer Woman’s Grave historic site can only be described as rundown and shabby. The set of timber steps that climb a low berm that fronts the site is rotting away. Foot traffic has largely bypassed the crude steps and trampled whatever vegetation was once growing along the berm.
Crumbling wood steps at the grave memorial
The wood cross on the Pioneer Woman’s Grave is long gone, and the remaining pile of rocks doesn’t exactly inspire reverence and respect. The few who might notice the nearby dedication plaque and interpretive sign learn that this is a grave site, but the overall scene is haphazard and kind of sad.
Remembrances… or Disrespect?
In recent years, “offerings” left by visitors have escalated at the Pioneer Woman’s Grave. They range from flowers and sentimental toys to a few religious tokens left in earnest. But mostly, the memorial has become cacophony of random tchotchkes that have little to do with the site or respect for the human remains that lie beneath the stones. To give a sense of the scene, here’s recent sampling of these offerings from a few weeks ago:
Flowers, fir cones and a plastic robot…
…Teddy bear…
…cross pendant…
…rubber ducky…
…superhero metal CDs…
…Liberace tapes…
…bubble gum and taco sauce…
…Minions, ammunition and COVID masks…
…and a severed jumper cable clamp.
If the original intent of this roadside monument was to honor nameless migrants who perished along Oregon Trail, then today’s version has lost its way. The Pioneer Woman’s Grave deserves better, and even some modest improvements would bring needed dignity to the site. More about that in a moment, but first, there is inspiration to be gained from other historic burial sites along the Oregon Trail.
Remembering the dead along the Oregon Trail
The Oregon Trail was a dangerous, often deadly trip for white migrants crossing into the West, with an estimated 1 in 10 dying along the way. Most were buried where they died, and their surviving families simply continued their push westward. Many of these graves are now preserved and celebrated as part of our traditional view of white settlement of the West.
In the early 1970s, one of these graves along a branch of the Oregon Trail, just east of Casper, Wyoming, was uncovered while a rancher was building a new road. Anthropology students from Casper College exhumed the remains and discovered this to be the burial place of 1852 pioneer Quintina Snodderly.
For many years, the Quintina Snodderly story was a mystery until owners of the ranch tracked down a descendent living in Scio, Oregon. We know from her skeletal remains that she was likely crushed under a wagon wheel, perhaps stumbling or falling while walking aside a wagon. Most who arrived on the Oregon Trail walked much of the way to reduce the burden for ox teams pulling heavy wagons.
Quintina’s surviving husband Jacob and their eight children made it to Scio, in the mid-Willamette Valley of the Oregon Territory, by the fall of 1852. Jacob died in 1889 at the age of 78, thirty years after Oregon became a state in 1859, and is buried in Scio.
Newly restored Quintina Snodderly grave as it appeared in 1987 (findagrave.com)
The Oregon-California Trail Association took the lead in reburying Quintina Snodderly’s remains in 1987, covering the grave with cobbles that replicated typical burials along the trail in the mid-1800s and surrounding the grave site with a wooden corral fence (above) to help preserve it. An interpretive marker (below) describes Quintina Snodderly’s journey and story.
Quintina Snodderly plaque placed by the Oregon-California Trails Association (findagrave.com)
Not far from the Snodderly grave in the North Platte valley of Wyoming are the twin graves of Martin Ringo and J.P. Parker, who also died along the Oregon Trail. Parker was from Iowa and died in 1860, though nothing else is known about him. Martin Ringo died tragically from a self-inflicted shotgun injury that was graphically described in newspaper accounts of the day:
“Just after daylight on the morning of July 30, 1864 Mr. Ringo stepped out… of the wagon, as I suppose, for the purpose of looking around to see if Indians were in sight and his shotgun went off accidentally in his own hands, the load entering at his right eye and coming out at the top of his head. At the report of his gun I saw his hat blown up 20 feet in the air and his brains were scattered in all directions. I never saw a more heartrending sight, and to see the distress and agony of his wife and children was painful in the extreme. Mr. Ringo’s death cast a gloom over the whole company… He was buried near the place he was shot in as decent a manner as was possible with the facilities on the plains” (Liberty Missouri Tribune, 1864)
Martin Ringo’s legacy played out after his death when his grieving widow Mary pushed forward, eventually raising their children in California’s Central Valley. Their oldest son John, who was 14 years old when his father was killed, brought infamy to the respected family name. He emerged as an outlaw and gunfighter in Arizona, the man known as Johnny Ringo who was killed near Tombstone, Arizona. His murder is unsolved, but speculation has included a revenge killing by either Doc Holliday or Wyatt Earp, notoriety that Martin Ringo couldn’t have imagined for his son!
The J.P. Parker and Martin Ringo graves near Casper, Wyoming (WyomingHistory.org)
Like the Snodderly grave, the Ringo-Parker graves are located on private ranch land, but have been preserved with a simple metal rail fence and marked with an interpretive marker placed by the Oregon-California Trails Association.
The Pioneer Woman’s grave was discovered during construction of the original Mount Hood Loop Highway in 1924, and were later placed under a cobble grave by road workers, much as Oregon Trail migrants buried their dead along the trail. A small cross was added to the grave (below). This soon became a popular stop for motorists along the new loop highway.
First restoration of the Pioneer Woman’s Grave along the (then unpaved) Mount Hood Loop Highway in the early 1930s
According to the Forest Service, the restored Pioneer Woman’s Grave was formally dedicated in 1931 by Forest Supervisor Thomas Sherrard and members of the Portland Progressive Club. Based on the photo of the ceremony (below), the site wasn’t improved for visitors at the time, simply marked as a gravesite.
Dedication of the restored Pioneer Woman’s Grave in 1931 (USFS)
In 1936, the DAR added a plaque to the grave, and shortly thereafter, Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) craftsmen working with the Forest Service placed a large interpretive sign there that would stand for many years.
1930s view of the Pioneer Woman’s Grave with the large, carved Forest Service sign added to the site. Note the original DAR plaque installed on the grave, itself.
1930s postcard with the sign text replaced and reversed for easier reading!
The DAR has marked another “unknown” Oregon pioneer grave to the west, the Pioneer Child Grave in Multnomah County. This historic grave also survived highway builders, albeit on an epic scale compared to the Pioneer Woman’s Grave. In 1849 a family traveling the Columbia Gorge route of the Oregon Trail camped at a spring near today’s Wilkes School on their final push to Oregon City. That night, their 11-year-old daughter died, apparently after a long illness. She was buried there in the next day in a makeshift coffin and her parents moved on to Oregon City, never returning.
The current location of the Pioneer Child’s grave memorial is at the corner of NE 169th and Wilkes Avenue in Gresham.
The story of the Pioneer Child later caught the imagination of students at the original Wilkes School, located near the grave, and they took it upon themselves to build a picket fence around the site and tend to the grave. In 1949, the construction of the original Banfield Freeway threatened the grave, and a former student of Wilkes School began a campaign to mark the grave with a memorial to protect it from future freeway widening. Finally, in 1955 a large boulder brought in by the Union Pacific Railroad was placed at the grave and a bronze plaque describing the site history was installed and dedicated.
In 1989 a freeway widening project once again threatened the grave and memorial. The DAR worked with highway engineers to relocated the Pioneer Child memorial to the south side of the widened Banfield Freeway, at what is now the corner of 149th and Wilkes Road. The original grave site is also marked by a plaque set in concrete along the Union Pacific Railroad, on the opposite side of the freeway from the memorial and inaccessible to the public.
The Daughters of the American Revolution placed this plaque on the Pioneer Child grave when the first Banfield Freeway was constructed in the early 1950s
Over the years volunteers have periodically tended to the grave, though the location in front of the freeway maintenance gate and adjacent, massive freeway sound wall still seems precarious. The monument is directly across from the modern Wilkes School, and perhaps someday the school grounds might make for a more respectful and protected location.
Telling the whole story
Romanticized scenes showing Indians and white migrants in peaceful interaction continue the myth that white settlement of Indian lands was a “manifest destiny”.
In recent years, our traditional view of the Oregon Trail has continued to evolve as white Americans have begun to acknowledge the role of white settlement in the West as a major contributor to the broader genocide of Native Americans who had lived here for millennia. For their part, Indians living along the migration route were largely friendly and helpful to white settlers. This, despite the threat the steady stream of migrants posed to their way of life and how white mythology portrayed “hostile Indians” in our history and arts. In fact, more Indians than whites were killed in trail conflicts between the migrants and the native peoples whose lands the Oregon Trail invaded.
This larger story deserves more attention as we continue to curate the history of the Oregon Trail along its route, not just the story of the white migrants who traveled it. Some newer interpretive signs have begun to acknowledge that white American myths celebrating the western migration completely ignore the devastating toll and continued trauma that genocide has wrought upon Native Americans. We still have a long way to go in our society reckoning. A simple start would be to include an Indian perspective at every site where more than a simple grave marker exists.
What could the future hold for the Pioneer Woman?
1940s visitor and the massive Pioneer Woman’s Grave sign that was installed in the 1930s
Despite the somewhat new interpretive sign, the Pioneer Woman’s Grave on Mount Hood has become a sad and disrespectful eyesore. So, what could be done to improve it and pay more appropriate respect to the history of the site? The other Oregon Trail graves described in this article provide some working examples of how the site might be restored.
But the Pioneer Woman’s Grave is different, since it lies along the final stretch of the migration route to Oregon. That these pioneers came close to their dream of reaching the Willamette Valley, only to fall short by a few days is especially poignant. Does a pile of rocks convey that cruel fate? Not really. But what about a more formal marker?
Pioneer cemeteries on both side of the Cascades include many white migrants who traveled the trail, and drawing from the period style of these cemeteries could be an appropriate way to bring more dignity to the Pioneer Woman’s Grave that a heap of stones. Fine examples exist in a pair of cemeteries located in the lonely Kingsley district, just off the original Barlow Road route, on the east side of Mount Hood (and featured in this recent article on Desert Mounds). These historic cemeteries are filled with pioneer graves, most in the Victorian-style of the mid-1800s. Many include wrought-iron fences to mark family plots, as seen in this example from the upper cemetery in Kingsley (below).
The Upper Kingsley Cemetery in the desert country east of Mount Hood lies along the Barlow Road and has many graves dating to the mid-to-late 1800s. This cemetery provides inspiration for period-specific grave fencing and monuments that could be appropriate for the Pioneer Woman’s grave.
Creating a fenced, mini-cemetery could be a historically accurate way to protect the Pioneer Woman’s Grave from foot traffic and bring a sense of dignity to the site. For example, the decapitated obelisk monument (perhaps it once had a cross on top?) shown below is also in the upper Kingsley Cemetery, and dates to the late 1800s. A monument like this could also provide a non-religious model for more formally marking the Pioneer Woman’s Grave in a period-specific manner.
This century-old monument in the Upper Kingsley Cemetery lost its top, but could still be a model for a new marker at a rededicated Pioneer Woman’s Grave.
While these treatments would depart from the crude graves that were built along the Oregon Trail, they do represent what pioneers would have placed upon these graves if they’d had the means — and how they marked graves of the era in the pioneer settlements they created along the trail and in the Willamette Valley.
Other details at the Pioneer Woman’s Grave need attention, too. The crude timber steps placed in the road embankment don’t do justice to the site, nor do they help visitors. Most simply walk up the dirt slope. A low stone retaining wall with more substantial steps and a ramp would be a welcome addition in a site makeover.
A real missed opportunity at the current site is the proximity to one of the best-preserved sections of the original Barlow Road, located just a few yards from the Pioneer Woman’s Grave, where the trail fords a fork of the Salmon River. This could make for an excellent interpretive trail, perhaps built to be accessible so that visitors with limited mobility or using mobility devices could experience traveling in the path of pioneer wagons.
Deep ruts left by pioneer wagons are plainly visible just a few yards from the Pioneer Woman’s Grave and could be incorporated into the interpretive experience (Photo by John Sparks and OregonHikers.org)
Perhaps most importantly, the site needs context about the native people whose trails the Barlow Road borrowed as it was blazed over the shoulder of Mount Hood by Sam Barlow. Today’s tribes continue to fish and gather berries and other foods and plant materials from the forest, as they have for millennia. This is just one story from an Indian perspective that could be told as part of providing cultural context and acknowledging the ultimate cost of white migration to native peoples at the Pioneer Woman’s Grave.
How to Visit?
Though our forests are currently closed by fires, you can walk a section of the original wagon route from Barlow Road to the Pioneer Woman’s Grave describe in this Oregon Hikers Field Guide entry. And you can always simply stop by the grave by following the old highway segment west from the Barlow Pass trailhead or following signs on OR 35 just past the US 26 junction.
Wildcat Mountain’s (now) forested summit as viewed from a surviving meadow along McIntyre Ridge
From Portland, the broad, densely forested slopes of Wildcat Mountain blend in with the surrounding Cascade foothills. The Mount Hood Loop Highway ruses past the northern foot of the mountain (the iconic Ivy Bear restaurant is located by Wildcat Creek, one of many streams that flow from the mountain). Wildcat Mountain Road (Forest Road 36) is the main access to the area, along with its extension, Forest Road 3626. Both are paved roads, and provide quick access from nearby communities to the west.
A century ago, the Wildcat Mountain was much different. Historic fires had repeatedly swept across the its slopes, creating sprawling Beargrass meadows along the broad northern shoulder of Wildcat Mountain known as McIntyre Ridge. Sheep were grazed here in the late 1800s and a fire lookout was constructed on the (then) bald, windswept summit of Wildcat Mountain in the 1930s.
White migrants to Oregon arriving along the Barlow Road in the mid-1800s made land claims to the lower slopes of Wildcat Mountain, logging the forests and clearing pastures that are still farmed today. The unclaimed upper slopes were eventually incorporated into the Cascade Range Forest Reserve in 1893, a predecessor of today’s Mount Hood National Forest. This marked the beginning of aggressive fire suppression in our national forests and heavy logging of the standing trees on the mountain.
This 1933 view from the (then open) summit of Wildcat Mountain shows the wide-open expanse of McIntyre Ridge spreading out to the north, thanks to repeated fires that maintained the extensive Beargrass meadows. Only fragments of these meadows survive today
Most of the claimed lands on the lower slopes of Wildcat Mountain have since been acquired as corporate timber holdings, and these forests have been repeatedly logged since the mid-1900s. The Forest Service logged much of the unburned forest on public lands on the middle slopes of Wildcat Mountain from the 1950s through the late 1980s. Meanwhile, fire suppression was allowing the open, upper slopes on McIntyre Ridge to gradually reforest.
As recently at the late 1960s, when Don and Roberta Lowe’s classic “100 Oregon Hiking Trails” was published, the old lookout trail along McIntyre Ridge to the summit of Wildcat Mountain still passed through broad meadows. They described being able to pick out the downtown buildings of Portland from the open summit. And as recently as the early 1990s, Mount Hood could still be easily seen from the top of Wildcat Mountain, though a rising forest of Mountain hemlock and Noble fir were rapidly advancing toward the summit.
Roberta Lowe and friends enjoying the view that existed on Wildcat Mountain until forests overcame the summit in the 1990s (from “62 Trails Northern Oregon Cascades” by Don & Roberta Lowe)
Today, the view from the summit of Wildcat Mountain has all but disappeared, mostly overtaken by the advancing forest. If you know where to look, you can still find remains of the old forest lookout among the trees. McIntyre Ridge still has a few Beargrass meadows along the historic lookout trail, though most have also been overtaken by forest. But this is a temporary state, as recent wildfires in the Gorge and on Mount Hood have reminded us. Wildcat Mountain will burn again, and there’s good reason to believe that the summit and McIntyre Ridge burned fairly regularly in the past, before human fire suppression.
The Struggle for Wildcat Mountain
The changes to Wildcat Mountain’s forests and meadows over the past several decades are just part of the story. The area has also been a source of intense struggle over public land management. The Forest Service aggressively managed the forests here for log production well into the 1980s, and this helped trigger the creation of the 62,000-acre Salmon-Huckleberry Wilderness in 1984. Wildcat Mountain and McIntyre Ridge formed the western edge of the new preserve. At the time, the new wilderness was unique in that it focused primarily on protecting forests, whereas Oregon’s wilderness areas prior to 1984 were mainly “rock and ice” preserves centered on the big Cascade peaks, away from prime logging areas.
Mount Hood emerging from the clouds after a November snowfall on Wildcat Mountain. This scene was captured in 1989 as Pacific rhododendron and young Noble fir were beginning to overtake the once open summit
However, the creation of the Salmon-Huckleberry Wilderness did little to change Forest Service management of the public lands adjacent to the new wilderness, and the focus on logging continued on the remaining, unprotected slopes of Wildcat Mountain. The resulting tangle of logging roads on both public and private lands in this area became a magnet for illegal off-road vehicles and target shooting, largely because its close proximity to Portland. This has become a serious and ongoing challenge for forest managers and law enforcement.
Forest Service logging on Wildcat Mountain had mainly focused on areas below Forest Road 3626, which contours across the gentle west slope just above the 3,000-foot level. This did not go unnoticed by conservationists and the Oregon Congressional delegation, and in 2009, most of the remaining uncut forests on Wildcat Mountain were added to the Salmon-Huckleberry Wilderness by Congress, with Road 3626 serving as the expanded wilderness boundary.
Salmon-Huckleberry Wilderness boundary sign along the Douglas Trail
This more recent expansion of the wilderness has only added to tensions with target shooters and off-road vehicles. Both groups have had a heavy impact on the area in recent years, with shooting galleries littered with trash and large trees literally felled by overwhelming gunfire. Off-roaders have illegally pushed miles into the wilderness, creating new “roads” to bypass Forest Service barriers. Illegal dumping also become a problem, adding to the problems facing land managers.
Timber corporations have responded to the lawlessness by closing their lands to any shooting, and the Forest Service closed a 4-mile section of Forest Road 12 to target shooting, as well. This has had the unintended effect of pushing target shooters and off-roaders still further along Forest Road 3626, and into the Salmon-Huckleberry Wilderness.
Most of today’s shooters aren’t hunters. They’re usually young, suburban kids packing high-powered weapons and handguns and showing little respect for our public lands. These shooters were in a closed area immediately adjacent to Wildcat Mountain Road
Sadly, the lawlessness in the area has also had dampening effect on hikers, a negative feedback loop that only encourages more lawless behavior. Illegal target shooters, off-roaders and dumpers go to places where they think they won’t be seen. Bringing more hikers to Wildcat Mountain is one of the best and most sustainable ways to discourage these illegal activities. It’s a proven concept known as “eyes on the forest”.
But it’s going to take some work. Today, the vandalized trailheads, shot-up or missing signage and vanishing trail views on the mountain are combining to make this convenient, beautiful wilderness destination an afterthought for hikers as they head for already crowded, more distant options where they won’t have to confront these problems.
Bullet-riddled sign announcing the Forest Service ban on shooting along sections of Forest Road 3626 on Wildcat Mountain. This sign was eventually destroyed by shooters
Shooters along Wildcat Mountain Road and Road 3626 have toppled dozens of full-sized trees with thousands of rounds fired at targets attached to the trees, or simply in a deliberate effort to drop them
On a recent visit to the New McIntyre Trailhead, I pulled up behind a truck full of young shooters. I hopped out and said “hello” and began to pull out my pack and hiking poles. When they realized I wasn’t going anywhere soon, they abruptly packed up and left. Even better, three more groups of hikers arrived shortly thereafter — and I’m quite certain other shooters came upon this group of parked cars that day and reversed course, too. That’s how the “eyes on the forest” effect of positive, legal recreation can chase away lawless activity.
Off-roaders have been increasingly bold in crossing into the Salmon-Huckleberry Wilderness in the Wildcat Mountain area in recent years. When the Forest Service placed boulders at the New McIntyre Trailhead in the mid-2000s, off-roaders simply pushed through a new “road” through dense forest to skirt the boulders. This illegal road continues to be used by off-roaders to take their trucks and ATVs into the wilderness area today.
The “road” on the left was created illegally by off-roaders in jeeps and ATVs in the late 2000s to bypass barriers placed at the McIntyre Ridge Trailhead. The actual trail is on the right and leads to the trailhead
The lower portion of the McIntyre Ridge Trail travels through open forest on a very old forest road. This has allowed off-roaders to drive along the trail for nearly a mile into the wilderness area, damaging both the trail and the forest floor where they have simply created new routes where logs have fallen across the trail, blocking their path.
The McIntyre Ridge Trail is on the left, but off-roaders created the road on the right to bypass the two trees flanking the trail. This spot is one-half mile inside the Salmon-Huckleberry Wilderness
A tree dropped across the McIntyre Ridge Trail in 2019 and off-roaders simply plowed through the forest on the left to create a new route for their vehicles, This spot is well inside the wilderness boundary
Off-roaders have been chopping down trees to widen the McIntyre Ridge where the trail narrows about a mile from the trailhead, an outrageous violation of federal law in a protected wilderness area
Where the McIntyre Ridge Trail eventually narrows, off-roaders have even been cutting trees to push their vehicles further into the wilderness. This level of lawlessness has been happening for many years, and it long past time to finally shut it down.
This article contains a series of modest proposals for turning the situation around on Wildcat Mountain by making it preferred hiking destination through improvements to the trails and trailheads. These include new signage, improved trailheads and some creative trail re-routing to bring back the views that hikers look for in their trail experience. How can this be done? More on that at the end of this article.
The Trails
Wildcat Mountain will burn again, and if the series of large fires on Mount Hood and in the Columbia River Gorge are any indication, we will see fire much more frequently in this century as a result of heavy fire suppression in the 20th Century. Someday, Wildcat Mountain and McIntyre Ridge might even return to the expansive complex of meadows that once existed here over time.
Mount Hood from the lower McIntyre Ridge Trail
Until that day, there are still magnificent views to be had if you know where to look. On the existing McIntyre Ridge Trail to Wildcat Mountain, two prominent viewpoints remain — a pocket view of Mount Hood near the trailhead (pictured above) and a more sweeping view of the mountain from a surviving meadow further along the ridge.
This latter viewpoint is the focus for most who hike the McIntyre Ridge Trail. Some years ago, the Forest Service allowed a memorial bench to be installed here, and though it is gradually collapsing under the weight of winter snows, the view it was designed for survives. This spot is often called the “Bench Viewpoint”, and remains a popular hiking destination, despite the problems in the Wildcat Mountain area.
The “bench” viewpoint along the McIntyre Ridge Trail, the most common destination for hikers today
But it turns out that a couple more viewpoints are tucked into the forest just off the McIntyre Ridge Trail, and with some modest trail realignments they would make for a much more scenic gateway into the Salmon-Huckleberry Wilderness.
The first is a rocky wall called “Kinnikinnick Cliff”. It rises directly above the existing trail, and offers a commanding view of Mount Hood and the entire Hoodland corridor, 3,000 feet below. Mount Adams, Mount Rainier and the Goat Rocks can be seen to the north, and the rugged canyons and forested ridges of the Salmon-Huckleberry Wilderness spread out to the southeast. This viewpoint is just over a mile from the unofficial New McIntyre Trailhead and would offer a nice option for casual hikers who want to experience wilderness with big views.
Kinnickinnick Cliff is mostly unseen from the McIntire Ridge Trail, though it rises directly above it in a rugged wall with sweeping view
Mount Hood rises above the Salmon-Huckleberry Wilderness in this panoramic view from Kinnickinnick Cliff. Smoke from the White River fire is visible in this August 2020 view, partly obscuring the mountain. Mount Adams and Mount Rainier can also be seen also on the northern horizon
Rerouting the existing trail to visit Kinnikinnick Cliff also has the benefit of bypassing an especially tedious section along the existing trail that I call “Misery Hill”. Though not particularly long, it’s very steep and badly eroded, and there’s no way to fix this problematic section of trail without a major reroute. Thus, the concept of moving the trail to the top of Kinnikinnick Cliff to provide a better grade along with a spectacular new view.
The “Misery Hill” section of the McIntyre Ridge Trail interrupts and otherwise well-graded trail and should be bypassed
The second hidden viewpoint is also just off the existing trail, located south of Kinnikinnick Cliff and just north of the largest of the remaining Beargrass meadows along the trail. This view is from the top of a beautiful talus slope that drops down the east side of McIntyre Ridge. The vista extends across the remote Boulder Creek canyon, below, and into the heart of the Salmon-Huckleberry and Roaring River wilderness areas. Mount Hood also peeks between the trees along the north edge of the talus viewpoint.
The talus viewpoint is just a few yards off the existing McIntyre Trail and provides a view deep into the remote ridges and canyons of the Salmon-Huckleberry and Roaring River wilderness areas
Rerouting the trail to visit the Talus Viewpoint is straightforward. Though hidden from the existing trail, the viewpoint is only 100 feet away, separated from the exiting trail by a low ridge. A modest realignment in the trail would add the Talus Viewpoint as another scenic highlight and destination for hikers along the McIntyre Ridge Trail.
The following maps show these proposed trail concepts:
Taking hikers to new viewpoints is a great way to increase interest in the Wildcat Mountain area, as well as make the wilderness experience more satisfying for anyone hiking the McIntyre Ridge Trail. Just a few more law-abiding visitors to the area could have a big impact on pushing the unlawful activity away from Wildcat Mountain, too — a virtuous cycle that is within reach.
The Trailheads
Hikers will put up with a lot to reach a favorite trail, but they shouldn’t have to. Until just a few years ago, the McIntyre Ridge Trail was accessed from Highway 26, where an especially rough Bureau of Land Management (BLM) logging spur climbs the north end of the ridge. This miserable route ended abruptly in the middle of a clear cut, with little room for parking. Worse, shooters and vandals were trashing the area. Because of this, the BLM abruptly closed the access road in the mid-2000s, with no consideration for an alternative access to the McIntyre Ridge Trail.
Hikers at the unofficial New McIntyre trailhead on Wildcat Mountain
The current and unofficial “New McIntyre” trailhead is simply a turnaround at the end of a short logging spur at the north end of Forest Road 3626. From this turnaround, hikers are able to follow an old skid road a short distance to the McIntyre Ridge Trail, joining it about a mile above of the original trailhead. While not recognized by the Forest Service, this unofficial trailhead is now the de facto access to McIntyre Ridge.
In the beginning (in the late 2000s), this turnaround was lightly visited and made for an excellent and safe parking spot for hikers. The half-mile gravel spur road from Forest Road 3626 was in good condition and easily traveled by passenger cars. This didn’t last long. As private timber corporations began to gate their road network on the lower slopes of Wildcat Mountain, illegal shooting, dumping and off-road activity eventually “discovered” the New McIntyre Trailhead.
Shooters have “discovered” the New McIntyre trailhead as other shooting galleries on Wildcat Mountain have been closed
Shooters at the New McIntyre trailhead recently felled two mature trees used as targets and other trees have been seriously injured
This big tree has suffered collateral damage from target shooters at the New McIntyre because it stands just 20 feet behind one of the target trees. Its bark has been seriously compromised by stray gunfire, with pitch bleeding from much of its trunk. If the shooting stopped tomorrow, this tree might survive
Shooters don’t like to be seen. The young men in the pickup disappearing in the distance are making a hasty exit from the New McIntire Trailhead after I showed up and began to unload my hiking gear
The damage is discouraging. Trees are badly scarred by target shooters, with some already toppled by assault. Boulders placed by the Forest Service to keep off-road vehicles out of the wilderness have been vandalized by taggers and the OHVs have simply built a new road into the wilderness that bypasses the barriers. In the center of the turnaround, heaps of half-burned garbage, beer cans and shell casings are routinely scattered around a large bonfire pit. The access road has devolved into a chain of massive mud holes, thanks to OHVs using it as a “play” area.
On a recent visit to the New McIntyre Trailhead, I was pleasantly surprised to find a 2-person Forest Service crew there picking up the place. But without new users coming here to self-enforce this as a lawful recreation area, it will be an endless cat-and-mouse chase for the Forest Service. They simply don’t have the crews needed to heavily patrol Wildcat Mountain to keep up with the mess left behind by shooters and off-roaders.
Burned trash left by shooters at the New McIntyre Trailhead
There’s no question who left this burned garbage behind at the New McIntyre Trailhead. Alcohol containers are almost always mixed in with the shooter trash and vandalism
These Forest Service crews arrived at the New McIntyre trailhead on a recent July weekend to clean up after shooters. They reported cleaning up this spot before, along with other illegal shooting sites along Wildcat Mountain Road
Though the current situation is frustrating, the fix is straightforward. First, the Forest Service should formally recognize the New McIntyre Trailhead as the main access point for the McIntyre Ridge Trailhead. Next, the access road (Forest Road 108) and turnaround should be graded and graveled to improve both the appearance and accessibility for hikers.
Crucially, more barrier boulders should also be added to block the illegal OHV road that bypasses the old barrier. Finally, the tagging and vandalism on the old barrier rocks should be sandblasted from them, as painted messages on rocks only encourages more tagging and shooting.
Off-road vehicle “play” in recent years has turned the short access road to the New McIntyre trailhead into an obstacle course of mud pits and ruts
“No Shooting” stencils on the boulders placed around the New McIntyre trailhead were well-intended, by have only drawn more tagging and vandalism
This “No Shooting” stencil at the New McIntyre trailhead has drown gunfire at close range. Combined with empty beer trash scattered about, this spectacle stands as a reminder that today’s shooters are often both reckless and intoxicated, a dangerous combination
Finally, the New McIntyre Trailhead needs signage — a signboard with a map of the Salmon-Huckleberry Wilderness, a trailhead marker pointing to the McIntyre Ridge Trail and a wilderness entry marker that can be seen from the trailhead. Will these be shot up by the shooters? Initially, yes. They probably will. But if enough cars are parked at this trailhead, the shooters and off-roaders will eventually find another place to do their work.
Similar improvements are needed at the nearby Douglas Trailhead, as well. Though it was built less than 10 years ago, the off-roaders and shooters have already had a pretty big impact there, too. Today, the trailhead needs a cosmetic overhaul and the decommissioned road that leads to the old trailhead needs to be decommissioned — again.
The Douglas Trailhead was relocated a few years ago to reduce the amount of lawlessness, but shooters and off-roaders have continued their assault
This used to be the wilderness entry sign at the Douglas Trailhead, before shooters and vandals tagged the plexiglass sign cover, then shot it to pieces
The Douglas Trailhead used to be located at an old quarry that was a locus of illegal activity and closed off when the new trailhead was built. Off-roaders have since re-opened the road to the quarry and pushed past barriers placed by the forest service to continue their destruction here
This landscape island at the new Douglas Trailhead turnaround has become another OHV “play” feature, with jeeps and ATVs driving right over the top
The goal is simple: the Douglas and New McIntyre trailheads must feel safe and well-maintained for hikers to finally tip the scales on Wildcat Mountain toward lawful, low-impact recreation. This can be done with some modest improvements and some persistence by the Forest Service.
The Roads
The half-mile spur road to the New McIntyre Trailhead is an obvious liability for hikers attempting to visit the area, but Wildcat Mountain Road (Road 36) and Road 3626 both need help, too. The good news is that both are paved and in surprisingly good condition. The bad news is that signage is non-existent, thanks to shooters and other vandalism. This also undermines the sense of safety needed to draw hikers to the area, and it just makes the roads needlessly hard to navigate.
Shooters made a target out of this sign pleading with off-roaders to stay on the road. The obscure third bullet is meaningless, anyway, since the Salmon Huckleberry Wilderness boundary along Road 3626 are not marked
Today, much of Wildcat Mountain Road is already closed to target shooting, but you’d never know it on a summer weekend, when carloads of mostly young men continue to come here to shoot. Signs that once explained what was off-limits and what was still open for shooting have long since been shot to pieces and removed. Even with the signage, the partial closure was confusing and too difficult to enforce.
Instead, it’s time to close the entirety of the Wildcat Mountain Road system to target shooting, including the private timber holdings, since they have already closed their properties. There are plenty of other places for shooters to go, and even lawful target shooting is incompatible with the adjacent Salmon-Huckleberry Wilderness. The folks who live along the lower sections of Wildcat Mountain Road would certainly embrace a no-shooting policy, too, as they also suffer the brunt of lawless activity.
Shooter damage to a sign along Forest Road 2636
This hard-to-find sign buried in the brush along Wildcat Mountain Road (Road 26) is likely seen by none
One tool for enforcing a shooting closure would be to make good use of the steel Forest Service gate on Wildcat Mountain Road near the forest boundary. The gate is located just below the spur road to the Douglas Trailhead, and could simply be closed when the upper slopes of Wildcat Mountain are covered in snow — roughly November through April.
Forest Service gate on Wildcat Mountain Road (Road 26)
Why close the area in winter? It turns out that some of the worst vandalism and OHV use occurs during these months, when few hikers are here to provide eyes on the forest. This may not be a needed as a long-term solution, but it could help change behavior and begin to turn the tide in the near term.
Making it Happen
How can all of this happen? The good news is that it wouldn’t cost much. The Forest Service already has budgets for road maintenance, and repairs to the New McIntyre spur road and turnaround could be prioritized for those funds. Likewise, signage for the trailhead and wayfinding signs along Wildcat Mountain Road and Road 3626 could also be prioritized in existing Forest Service maintenance budgets.
Beargrass meadow in full bloom along the McIntyre Ridge Trail
Closing the area to target shooters? That’s an administrative action that can be done overnight, assuming the Forest Service is willing to make that call. It should be an easy one, as the damage left behind is harming the forest and already costing the agency to patrol and clean up. It’s a case that hiking and trail advocates will need to make in order to move the agency forward.
Designing new trails is often a heavier lift with the Forest Service, as this usually require an environmental analysis, planning and surveying. However, “realigning” an existing trail can often be done without an exhaustive environmental analysis, so the proposals in this article might be less problematic to move forward than a completely new trail.
July Beargrass blooms frame Mount Hood on McIntyre Ridge
Even better, both of the trail realignments proposed here are close to the trailhead and very close to Portland, making them excellent candidates for volunteer organizations like Trailkeepers of Oregon (TKO) to take on as day trips.
Can all of this really happen? The answer is “yes” if the problem statement is “how do we simultaneously improve access to the Salmon-Huckleberry Wilderness while ending lawless behavior in the area.” That’s a compelling and proven strategy. So, let’s take back Wildcat Mountain!
Two of Mount Hood’s pint-sized glaciers are hidden in plain sight in this sunset view from the Mazama Trail
Officially, Mount Hood has twelve glaciers, though two — the Langille on the north side and Palmer on the south side — seem to have slowed to permanent snowfield status. The distinction comes from downward movement, which typically results in cracks, or crevasses, in the moving ice. Crevasses are the telltale sign of a living glacier.
Living glaciers are conveyor belts for mountain ice, capturing and compacting snowfall into ice at the top of the glacier, which then begins to flow downhill from the sheer weight of the accumulation. This downward movement becomes river of ice that carries immense amounts of rock and debris captured in the ice, eventually carving U-shaped valleys in the mountain.
Mount Hood’s largest glaciers carved the huge canyons we see radiating in all directions from the mountain today. These canyons were made when the glaciers were much larger, during the Pleistocene ice age that ended several thousand years ago. The ice on Mount Hood has since retreated, though today’s much smaller glaciers continue their excavating high on the mountain.
The dramatic retreat of the Eliot Glacier on Mount Hood over the past century is captured in these photo comparisons from 1901 and 2012 (Glacier Rephoto Database)
The smallest glaciers on Mount Hood are the Coalman Glacier, located high in the volcano’s crater, and the Glisan Glacier, located on the northwest shoulder of the mountain. They are tiny compared to the impressive Eliot, Ladd, Coe and Sandy glaciers, but these tiny glaciers are still moving, have well-developed crevasses and both are clearly separate from the larger glaciers. Thus, they were recognized as living glaciers in their own right when Mount Hood was being mapped more than a century ago.
Another tiny glacier is without a formal name, and would have been Mount Hood’s thirteenth glacier had it been mapped with the others in the early 1900s. Known informally as the Little Sandy Glacier, this small body of ice is perched on the rocky shoulder of Cathedral Ridge, near the Glisan Glacier. The Little Sandy hangs on cliffs high above the sprawling Sandy Glacier, which it drains into.
The map below shows each of Mount Hood’s glaciers, from the tiny Glisan to the massive Eliot, largest on the mountain:
This article takes a closer look at these lesser-known, tiny glaciers. While small, all three have been surprisingly resilient in the era of climate change, when our glaciers are rapidly shrinking. Their tiny size and survival (so far) makes them helpful indicators of the long-term effects of global warming on Mount Hood, and a visual reminder of just how fragile our alpine ecosystems are as the planet continues to heat up.
The Coalman Glacier
The Coalman Glacier is located in Mount Hood’s crater, high above the White River Glacier
This glacier is known to few, and yet is probably the most visited on Mount Hood. The Coalman Glacier fills the crater of Mount Hood, extending from below the summit to Crater Rock, and is crossed by thousands of climbers following the popular south side route to the summit each year. Along their climb, they follow a ridge of ice along the glacier called “The Hogsback” to the Coalman Glacier’s “bergschrund”, the name given to a crevasse that typically forms near the top of most glaciers, and a common feature to many glaciers on Mount Hood. For climbers on Mount Hood, the bergschrund on the Coalman Glacier is simply called “The Bergschrund”, and it is the main technical obstacle on the south side route to the summit.
The entire Coalman Glacier lies above 10,000 feet, and as a result, this tiny glacier is well-situated to survive a warming climate. Historic photos (shown later in this article) suggest the Coalman Glacier was once connected to the White River Glacier, located immediately below, as recently as the late 1800s.
Mount Hood’s summit lookout in the 1920s
The Coalman Glacier was named for Elijah “Lige” Coalman, the legendary mountain guide who manned the former fire lookout on the summit of Mount Hood from 1915 to 1933. Lige Coalman climbed Mount Hood nearly 600 times in his lifetime, sometimes making multiple climbs in one day to carry 100 pound loads of supplies to the summit lookout. In Jack Grauer’s classic Mount Hood: A Complete History, he describes Lige Coalman’s legendary stamina:
“…The great vitality of Coleman was demonstrated by one day he spent in 1910. He and a climbing client ate breakfast at the hotel in Government Camp. They then climbed to the summit of Mount Hood and down to Cloud Cap Inn where the client wanted to go. After lunch at Cloud Cap, Lige climbed back over the summit and arrived for dinner at Government Camp at 5:00 p.m.”
The Coalman Glacier was formally recognized as a separate body of ice from the nearby White River and Zigzag glaciers in the 1930s. However, this tiny glacier went unnamed until Lige Coalman died in 1970, and the Oregon Geographic Names Board named the small glacier he had navigated hundreds of times in his memory. Fittingly, Lige Coalman’s ashes were spread on Mount Hood’s summit.
Lige Coalman (left) on the first summit lookout on Mount Hood in 1915 (from “Mount Hood: A Complete History” by Jack Grauer)
Though the south side route is considered the easiest way to the summit of Mount Hood, every route on the mountain is dangerous. Many tragedies have unfolded over the decades on the Coalman Glacier, when climbers have fallen into The Bergschrund crevasse or slid into the steaming volcanic vents in the crater. Perhaps most notorious was the May 2002 climbing disaster, when three climbers were killed and four injured by a disastrous fall into The Bergschrund.
1920s climbers on the Hogsback on the Coalman Glacier. The wide crevasse known as The Bergschrund lies ahead as they make their way toward the summit (USFS)
While the 2002 accident was tragic enough, it was the rescue operation that made the incident infamous when an Air Force helicopter suddenly crashed onto the Coalman Glacier, rolling several times before coming to a rest below the Hogsback. News cameras hovering above the scene broadcast the event in real-time, and the sensational footage was seen around the world. Though several Air Force crew were injured, nobody was killed in the helicopter crash.
The Glisan Glacier
The Glisan is Mount Hood’s smallest named glacier, tucked against Cathedral Ridge on the northwest side of the mountain. This tiny glacier is hidden in plain sight, located directly above popular Cairn Basin and McNeil Point, where thousands of hikers pass by on the Timberline Trail every year. It was named for Rodney Lawrence Glisan Jr. by the Oregon Geographic Names Board in 1938. The name was proposed by the Mazamas, Mount Hood’s iconic climbing club, following an expedition to the northwest side of the mountain in 1937.
Rodney Glisan Jr. in the late 1800s (Mazama Library and Historical Collections)
Glisan was a prominent Portland lawyer and civic leader in the late 1800s and early 1900s, and son of one of the founding fathers of the city. He served on the Portland City Council and in the Oregon Legislature, as well as other civic roles. But his passion was for the outdoors, and as a Mazama, Rodney Glisan climbed most of the major Cascade and Sierra peaks during his eventful life.
The glacier that carries Rodney Glisan’s name was once much larger, and its outflow carved a steep canyon lined with vertical cliffs that now form the shoulder of the lower ramparts of Cathedral Ridge. Today, this rugged canyon is without trails and unknown to most who visit the mountain.
Most hikers visiting McNeil Ridge wouldn’t know they’re looking at the Glisan Glacier as they make the final climb above the tree line, but the glacier’s outflow is a popular stop along the way. This beautiful stream flows through some of the finest wildflower meadows on the mountain (pictured above).
Oddly enough, this glacial stream is unnamed, though it’s much larger than many named streams on the mountain. In fact, it’s the only glacial outflow on the mountain that is unnamed. Thus, on my growing list of planned submissions to the Oregon Geographic Names Board is to simply name this pretty stream “Glisan Creek”, since it’s a prominent and helpful landmark along the Timberline Trail. Naming the creek might bring a bit more awareness and appreciation for the tiny Glisan Glacier, too!
As Mount Hood’s glaciers go, the Glisan isn’t much to look at today. The glacier is much smaller than when it was named in the 1930s, judging by topographic maps (below) that show a lower portion of the glacier that has since become a series of permanent snowfields that are no longer part of the glacier.
The Glisan Glacier also has an odd shape, wider than it is long. Presumably, this is due to both shrinking over the past century and possibly winter wind patterns affecting snow accumulation on this little body of ice. But it is moving, with a prominent series of crevasses opening up every summer on its crest. It’s also surprisingly resilient in its modern, shortened state, bucking the trend (for now) of shrinking glaciers throughout the Cascades.
Topographic maps created in the mid-1900s show the former extent of the Glisan Glacier
Topographic maps still show the former extent of the Glisan Glacier in the mid-1900s, when it extended to nearly 6,000 feet in elevation. Today, the glacier has retreated to about the 7,000-foot level.
The position of the Glisan Glacier on northwest side of the mountain could also be part of the explanation for its resilience. The glacier flows from the north side of Cathedral Ridge, where it is protected from the hottest late summer sun, and it also benefits from being in the direct path of winter storms that slam the west face of the mountain with heavy snowfall. Will the Glisan Glacier continue to survive? Possibly, thanks to its protected position and having already retreated to the 7,000-foot elevation. Time will tell.
The Little Sandy Glacier
This little glacier should have been Mount Hood’s thirteenth named glacier, but it has the misfortune of lying very close to the much larger Sandy Glacier and was passed over when the first topographic maps were created in the early 1900s. And yet, it was called out in Forest Conditions in the Cascade Range, the seminal 1902 original survey of the (then) “Cascade Forest Reserve”, the precursor to the national forests that now stretch the length of the Oregon Cascades:
It was tiny then, at just 80 acres. But at the time of the 1902 survey, the Reid, Langille, Palmer and Coalman glaciers had yet to be named, so this will be my argument in adding the Little Sandy Glacier to my (still!) growing list of name proposals for the Oregon Board of Geographic Names to consider.
Why is a name important for this tiny glacier? In part, because without names we tend to not pay attention to important features on our public lands, usually to their detriment. But in the case of the Little Sandy Glacier, there are some good public safety arguments, since the glacier is adjacent to a couple of the climbing routes used on the mountain. Formalizing its name could help search and rescue efforts compared to the informal use of the name today.
The Little Sandy Glacier is a heavily-crevassed body of ice perched on the cliffs of Cathedral Ridge, high above the much larger Sandy Glacier
Like the nearby Glisan Glacier, the Little Sandy is oddly shaped. Wider than it is long, it hangs seemingly precariously on a massive cliff and is heavily fractured with crevasses. In summer, meltwater from the Little Sandy cascades over long cliff and down a talus slope where it then flows under the Sandy Glacier, joining other meltwater streams there.
What does the future hold for the Little Sandy Glacier? Like the Glisan Glacier, it benefits from heavy snow accumulation where winter storms pound the west face of the mountain. Yet, unlike the Glisan, the Little Sandy Glacier hangs on a southwest-facing wall and is exposed to direct afternoon sun in summer.
Surprisngly, this doesn’t seem to have dramatically affected the size of the glacier over the years, perhaps because it sits so high on the mountain. The base of the glacier is at an elevation of about 8,400 feet (higher than Mt. St. Helens) and the upper extent of the glacier begins just above 9,000 feet. This combination of high elevation and heavy winter snowpack suggest the Little Sandy Glacier will continue to survive for some time to come, even as global warming continues to shrink Mount Hood’s glaciers.
Tracking Mount Hood’s Changing Glaciers
Mount Hood’s Eliot Glacier is impressive, but in truth is a fraction of its size just a few decades ago.
Who is tracking the changes in Mount Hood’s glaciers? The answer is a collection of federal and state agencies, university researchers and non-profits concerned with the rapid changes unfolding on the mountain.
The U.S. Geological Survey has the most comprehensive monitoring program for Mount Hood, though it is mainly focused on volcanic hazards presented by the mountain. From this perspective, the glaciers and permanent snowfields on Mount Hood represent a disaster risk in the event of renewed volcanic activity, as past eruptions have triggered massive mudflows when snow and ice were abruptly melted by steam and hot ash.
Mount Hood’s glaciers, as recognized by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS)
The late 1700s eruptions that created today’s Crater Rock and the smooth south side that Timberline Lodge sits on also sent mudflows down the Sandy River to its confluence with the Columbia River. The delta of mud and volcanic ash at the confluence gave the river its name, when the Lewis and Clark Expedition reached the scene just a few years after the event, calling it the “quick sand river”. The potential reach of future mudflows is why the USGS continues to monitor Mount Hood’s glaciers.
The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and other water resource and fisheries agencies are also tracking the glaciers from the perspective of downstream water supplies and quality. Mount Hood’s glaciers not only provide critical irrigation and drinking water for those who live and farm around the mountain, they also ensure cool water temperatures in summer that are critical for endangered salmon and steelhead survival.
In academia, Portland State University geologist Andrew Fountain has been a leading local voice in tracking change in our glaciers, collaborating with federal agencies to monitor glaciers across the American West. Several PSU students have completed graduate theses on Mount Hood’s glaciers under Dr. Fountain, including glaciologist Keith Jackson’s excellent research on the Eliot Glacier.
The once-mighty White River Glacier on Mount Hood has receded dramatically over the past century (Glacier RePhoto Databse)
Dr. Fountain’s research features photo pairing where historic images of Mount Hood’s glaciers have been recreated to show a century of change on the mountain. These images (above and at the top of the article) of the White River and Eliot glaciers are examples, and show the power of these comparisons in understanding the scale and pace of change.
The following is a shorter-term comparison of my own images of the Eliot Glacier, taken in 2002 and 2019 at about the same time of year (in late summer). Look closely, and the changes are profound even in this 17-year timeframe. Geologists call the boundary on a glacier where melting exceeds accumulation the “firn line”. Typically, glaciers appear as mostly ice and snow above the firn line compared to much more rock and glacial till below the firn line, where the ice is melting away and leaving debris behind.
In 2002, the firn line on the Eliot Glacier had risen the lower icefall as the glacier receded, as shown in the image pair, above. The 2002 firn line is indicated by the white and blue ice still dominating the lower icefall. But by 2019, the firn line had moved partway up the lower icefall, as shown in the second image. Over time, scientists expect the glaciers on Mount continue to gradually retreat in this way as they increasingly losing more ice than they gain each year in our warming climate.
What Lies Ahead?
Will Mount Hood’s glaciers completely disappear? Perhaps, someday, if global warming goes unchecked. If climate change can be slowed, we may see the glaciers stabilize as smaller versions of what we see today. While the few remaining glaciers in the Rockies are already very small and on the brink of disappearing, glaciers on the big volcanoes of the Cascades of Oregon and Washington are still large and active. They have advantage of a very wet and cool winter climate that ensures heavy snowfall at the highest elevations, even as the climate warms.
One way to preview the future of Mount Hood’s glaciers is to look south to California’s Mount Shasta, at the lower end of the Cascade Range. At just over 14,000 feet, Shasta is tall enough to have seven named glaciers, even in a much warmer climate — though only four seem to still be active. Compare that to Mount Rainier, in Washington, which is also a 14,000-foot volcano, but has 26 glaciers, with several very large, active glaciers that dwarf anything found on Mount Shasta or Mount Hood.
Despite its height, Mount Shasta’s glaciers only survive above 10,000 feet due to the mountain’s southern latitude in the Cascade Range
The difference is latitude, of course. Climate change is having the effect if sliding us gradually toward the warmer climate we see to the south today, at Mount Shasta, where glaciers are smaller, but still survive above the 10,000-foot level. If Shasta is an indicator, then glaciers will continue to flow for some time at the upper elevations of Mount Hood and the other big volcanoes in northern Oregon and Washington for some time to come, perhaps even surviving if climate change remains unchecked.
In the meantime, the changes on Mount Hood are just one more reminder of how climate change is impacting almost every aspect of our lives and our natural legacy, and why changing the human behavior that is driving climate change is the existential challenge of our time. Though time is short, we can still ensure that future generations will see spectacular glaciers flowing down Mount Hood’s slopes in the next century.
Mount Adams framed by mysterious desert mounds found east of Mount Hood
A strange phenomenon plays out in the shadow of Mount Hood, across the broad desert ridges and plateaus of the Columbia Basin. Tens of thousands of dome-shaped soil mounds that range from a dozen feet to more than 60 feet in diameter rise atop the rocky bedrock, often in swarms that number in the hundreds.
These mounds were given the unfortunate name of “biscuit scablands” by white emigrants arriving in the Northwest in the mid-1800s. They understandably loathed them as yet another miserable obstacle for wagon travel, no doubt having to weave among them on the rocky ground that typically surrounds these mounds.
Later, they discovered that farming the “scablands” was equally difficult, and even today the sweeping wheat fields of the Columbia basin are still plowed around many of these odd formations where the ground has never been tamed.
White settlers arriving by wagon in the Columbia Basin in the 1800s gave “biscuit scablands” their name as they navigated thousands of these mounds along their journey (Oregon Trail Center)
Their pioneer name refers to “biscuits” of mounded soil on the scoured, rocky basalt substrate, or “scabland”, that typically surrounds the mounds. These mysterious humps in the desert are usually round, but depending on slight variations in slope, they also appear in oval and oblong shapes.
A maze of desert mounds once covered a much larger part of the Columbia Basin, but more than a century of farming has erased many of the “biscuit” fields from the landscape. Still, even after 150 years of farming, they can still be found in the thousands, and their origin is still debated by geoscientists.
What are they?
Many theories on the formation of these mounds have been put forth since white settlement in the Pacific Northwest began. Among the early theories were Indian burial mounds, giant anthills, gopher mounds, wind-blown dunes, bison wallows and (of course!) extraterrestrials. While creative, none of these explanations are supported by field observation.
Similar mounds are found around the world, and often called “mima mounds” after the famous Mima Mounds near Olympia Washington. Recently, the early theory that they were created by pocket gophers has found favor again.
While it sounds far-fetched, the gopher theory was boosted in the 1980s when a scientist used metal tracing to show that pocket gophers living in soil mounds in California actually pushed soil toward the top, and not outward, as was expected. This gave new life to the idea that gophers could create massive mounds over time.
Did pocket gophers create the desert mounds east of Mount Hood? Field science still says otherwise…
Scientists hoping to build on this discovery have since created a computer model to show that, over millennia, generations of pocket gophers could create large mounds on this scale.
While the renewed gopher theory might hold true for soil mounds found elsewhere in the world, the desert mounds found east of Mound Hood are different. The mounds of the Columbia Plateau are highly organized in their shape and distribution in a way that can’t be explained by the gopher model. These mounds clearly formed in direct relationship to the slopes they have formed upon, something that scientists have yet to explain with gopher models.
There’s also the fact that computer simulations of gopher activity are only as valid as the model inputs used by the scientists, especially when the simulations involve thousands of iterations, as the gopher model does. The gold standard in science is still direct field observation, and only the magnetic tracing research from the 1980s supports the gopher theory with this rigor.
So, for this article I’ve turned to original field research completed in the 1970s by a pair of Oregon graduate students. Their work continues to make the most compelling case for how our desert mounds formed. Clark Nelson of Oregon State University and John Baine Pyrch of Portland State University completed their research separately, but they came to the same conclusions on the general origin of the mounds. Both found that desert mounds are geomorphic relics from the last ice age, and were created by soil heave and sorting from repeated freezing and thawing, not gophers.
In 1973, John Pyrch completed his thesis on the origin of rock stripes, a related phenomenon to desert mounds in the Columbia Basin. Clark Nelson built on this research with his 1977 thesis focusing on soil mounds and their surrounding rock rings, the main focus of this article. Perhaps most importantly, both Pyrch and Nelson based their research on conditions specific to the Columbia Basin, as it’s likely that other origins for soil mounds exist, depending on where they originate in the world.
Clark Nelson dissected this desert mound near Shaniko in the 1970s, unlocking some of the secrets of how these soil mounds and rings of rock formed
For his field research, Clark Nelson camped out near the semi-ghost town of Shaniko, Oregon, where huge swarms of mounds fan out across the high plains. Nelson literally dissected a soil mound and its accompanying ring of stony “scabland” to understand how these features came to be.
Clark’s field work showed the soil mounds and their stone rings to be interrelated features, formed by the same freeze-thaw cycles during the past ice age, more than 11,000 years ago, when the Columbia Plateau was much colder and much wetter than today. Because these ice age conditions have long passed, Clark also found that the mounds themselves are no longer evolving, and instead are simply geologic relics frozen in time.
The ancient setup
According to Clark’s research, three ingredients set the stage for the formation of today’s desert mounds. First are the sprawling Columbia River flood basalts that cover much of eastern Oregon and Washington. It’s hard to comprehend the magnitude of these lava flows, as they originated near today’s Idaho border 16 million years ago and flowed all the way to the Oregon Coast of today. More than 300 of these massive flows spread for hundreds of miles over the millennia, burying the landscape in layers of basalt.
Today, we see these flood basalts prominently in the Columbia River Gorge, where the river has carved through them, revealing layer upon layer of basalt that forms rocky features like Crown Point and the cliffs behind Multnomah Falls. Clark found these expanses of solid bedrock to be an essential foundation for the soil mounds and rock rings.
The second ingredient came much more recently, at least in geologic time. As the last ice age began to wind down, continental glaciers that once extended as far south as Olympia (and scooped out the Puget Sound) began to retreat northward. The continental glaciers produced an immense amount of glacial silt that was spread far beyond the glacial extent over the millennia. We know today that wind played a major role in redistributing this glacial silt southward into Oregon, piling it in layers on top of the ancient Columbia flood basalts to depths of several feet.
Finally, the third ingredient is the ongoing building of the Cascade Range, which has laid down countless layers of volcanic ash across the Columbia Basin over time. When Clark Nelson dissected his desert mound near Shaniko, he found both the wind-blown glacial silts and volcanic ash interspersed in the soil layers that make up the mounds.
Nelson’s research also showed these layers of glacial and volcanic soil to be relatively undisturbed, and that the same sequence of layers could be found across groups of mounds in a given area. This observation casts further doubt on the gopher theory, since burrowing gophers would have mixed these soil layers up over time, had they been the builders of the mounds.
How the mounds formed
Clark Nelson believed the desert mounds and their rock rings formed through a process of natural sorting, where fine soil material is pushed up into mounds and rocks pushed out to the edges to form rings through countless cycles of freezing and thawing.
Nelson made his case with well-established research on the sorting effects of freeze-thaw cycles, and he argued that sorting on such a profound scale could only have happened during the end of the last ice age, when conditions were much colder and wetter than today’s arid desert climate. The schematic (below) is from Nelson’s thesis, and describes this process.
Nelson’s research also revealed that soil mounds tend to form where the soil depth is shallow atop the relatively impermeable basalt bedrock layer. As the schematic (below) from his thesis shows, the shallowness of the soil layer played an important role in forcing the sorting of rocks from fine soils through continuous movement from freezing and thawing.
Nelson believed that this freeze-thaw process, played out over millennia, created the soil mounds and rock rings in flat or gently sloping areas where the mounds were more protected from surface erosion. He observed that mounds only formed on gently sloping terrain, with less than 10 percent slope, and that they became oblong as the slope increased.
He also observed that mounds formed in rows, aligned in the direction of the slope. This phenomenon shows the effects of gravity on the mounds as they formed, with their shapes stretching downhill when slopes increase. As shown in the first schematic in this article, Nelson described the interconnected rock rings that surround these round and oblong mounds as “nets”.
Finally, Nelson argued that only during the end of the Pleistocene epoch (the geologic term for the last ice age) would there have been enough moisture and cold to produce the thousands of freeze-thaw cycles needed to create today’s desert mounds. He believed that the climate that has since emerged in the Columbia Basin is not only too warm and dry to continue this sorting process, but that the desert climate has also protected the static mounds from erosion and being disturbed by forest cover.
According to Clark Nelson, this is the sequence of events left us with the thousands of desert mounds we see today. He makes a compelling case based on field research in our region that stands up well against other, more generic theories on the origin of soil mounds.
For his part, John Pyrch studied the origins of rock stripes that mark many of the steeper slopes in areas where soil mounds otherwise occur. Like Clark Nelson’s work, Pyrch’s research found these stripes to be relics of the last ice age.
First, Pyrch showed the strips to be distinct from common talus slopes, where an obvious source of rock at the head of the talus flow exists. Rock stripes lack such a source or falling rock. He also found that the desert rock stripes in the Columbia Basin aren’t moving like talus slopes, where rock is actively being added to the talus flow. Instead, rock stripes are gradually weathering but have become mostly static since their formation during the ice age.
Pyrch also observed that rocks within these stripes are sorted, unlike talus slopes, suggesting the same ice age freeze-thaw origins as soil mounds and rock rings. Pyrch and Nelson both believed the rock stripes were simply extensions of the rock circles that surround soil mounds on flatter ground, the rock “nets” that Nelson described. As the earlier schematic from Clark Nelson’s research shows, these “nets” of interconnected rock rings eventually become so elongated as slopes steepen that they become rock stripes.
Tygh Ridge Quarry
Clark Nelson’s dissected soil mound near Shaniko has likely disappeared under sagebrush after 40 years, but a small quarry near Tygh Ridge provides a fresh cross-sections of soil mounds that illustrate their origins, as explained by Clark Nelson and John Pyrch. About six feet of the underlying basalt bedrock has been quarried here, with several soil mounds and rocks rings bisected in the process, as shown below.
A closer look (below) at one of these quarried mounds shows the distinct soil layer perched on top of the bedrock, as well as a profile of the rock ring surrounding the mound.
A closer (below) look at the floor of the quarry reveals truncated columns of basalt from the ancient lava flows that make up the bedrock under the desert mounds.
Basalt columns make up the bedrock under the mounds
The importance of basalt in the development of the mounds comes from its impermeability. Nelson believed the poor drainage typical of basalt flows ensured regular ponding of surface water, and therefore ensured a ready supply of moisture to drive the freeze-thaw cycle when the Columbia Basin was much colder and wetter.
Seeing Desert Mounds on the Ground
Desert mounds can be tough to spot on the ground, precisely because they formed on flat or gently sloping ground. But the advent of modern mapping tools has brought these features to life in a way that John Pyrch and Clark Nelson could not have imagined in the 1970s. The following image sets combine Google Earth aerial imagery with on-the-ground photos of the same areas to give a sense of what the mounds look like at eye level.
The first schematic (below) shows a flat-topped ridge in the Deschutes Canyon, just south of Tygh Ridge, with a well-developed swarm of desert mounds plainly visible. The underlying basalt layers can also be seen at the margins of the ridge, and flow lines on the ridge top can be seen where rows of mounds are aligned in the descending direction of the slope.
Mounds in this schematic are round where the ground is flat, then become oblong in the direction of the slope where the ridge falls toward the canyon. The mounds finally disappear where slopes exceed 10 percent. This mound group does not include rock stripes, but in many similar examples, the stripes would continue down the canyon slopes below the lower limit of the soil mounds.
The following image shows what this terrain looks like on the ground in mid-spring, when the soil mounds are still holding moisture and supporting green vegtation, but the flat, shallow rock rings surrounding the mounds have already browned for the summer. This view is across a nearby ridge top in the Deschutes Canyon to the one shown in the previous schematic.
Mound swarm on a ridge top above the Deschutes River
The small farming community of Dufur is surrounded mostly by wheat and alfalfa fields, but a sizeable swarm of desert mounds survives due east of the community. It’s unclear why some mounds have been flattened and plowed while others were passed over by farmers, but one possible explanation could be the original depth of the soil in the mounds, and whether enough soil existed in the mounds to support farming when plowed flat.
On the ground, desert soil mounds near Dufur (below) are also most prominent in late spring, when the mounds are still green with new growth but the surrounding rock rings have browned for the summer. This view shows three separate swarms of mounds, one in front of the closest row of trees, a second swarm between the rows of trees and a third on the distant slope.
Desert mound swarms near Dufur
One of the most accessible places to see desert mounds is on the Rowena Plateau, in the Columbia River Gorge. These mounds formed at the western margin of where mounds occur in the Columbia Basin, but share all of the typical features of soil mounds.
This aerial schematic (above) shows a couple of ice-age features whose origins have been long-debated by geologists. First, the soil mounds show up prominently, and seem to fit the explanation given by Clark Nelson for their origin. But the plateau also includes at least two kettle (or “pothole”) lakes that are typically formed by ice age glaciers leaving blocks of ice behind that are initially buried in sediments, then melt to leave a depression, or “kettle” behind.
But the “kettles” at Rowena are formed in solid basalt flows, so geologists believe they were carved into the basalt by the series of massive ice age floods known as the Missoula Floods. They believe floodwaters eroded these depressions much like the potholes commonly found in rivers, except on a massive scale.
Timing is key to the story at Rowena, as the ancient floods also swept away all but the basalt bedrock on the plateau, and any soil mounds that had formed before the floods wouldn’t have survived. The Missoula Floods occurred more than 13,000 years ago, so with the ice age winding down by about 11,700 years ago, that leaves a window of less than 2,000 years for windblown glacial and volcanic sediments to accumulate here, and for freeze-thaw action to sort the sediments into the mounds we see today. Was that enough time for these mounds to have formed according to Clark Nelson’s theories? This uniquely narrow geologic window could make Rowena Plateau the place where the mystery of the desert mounds can finally be unlocked by researchers.
On the ground at Rowena Plateau, the rock rings are prominent between the soil mounds (below). Consistent with Clark Nelson’s theory of a standing water table atop the bedrock, they often form vernal pools in winter and spring.
Rock rings surrounding the soil mounds at Rowena
Hikers on the plateau may not recognize the mounds as geologic features, but they cover most of the plateau and are surprisingly easy to spot, along with their network of rock rings (below).
Hikers passing through the soil mounds at Rowena
In this view (below), a hiking trail weaves among the mounds as it makes its way across the plateau, much as pioneer wagons must have dodged the desert mounds in the mid-1800s.
Trail meandering between desert mounds on the Rowena Plateau
Clark Nelson chose the Shaniko plateau for his field research in the 1970s, and it’s easy to see why from modern aerial photos, as shown in the following schematic (below). The terrain here slopes gently toward the surrounding canyons, creating the perfect geologic setup for soil mounds.
The expansive extent of the desert mounds at Shaniko also shows how closely their formation follows slopes, with mounds radiating from a barely discernable high point in the plateau toward the canyons beyond the town.
This second view (below) of the Shaniko swarm of desert mounds provides some context, with a pickup truck and semi-truck captured in the aerial imagery for scale.
In the tiny farm community of Kingsley, located a few miles south of Dufur and west of Tygh Ridge, there are more headstones than residents these days, with two pioneer cemeteries providing close-up views desert mounds. In this aerial view (below) a swarm of desert mounds has survived the plows next to the Kingsley Cemetery. Many other isolated mound swarms are located throughout the Kingsley area.
On the ground, the Kingsley mounds are prominent, especially in mid-spring when wildflowers and native grasses flourish on the mounds. The rock rings surrounding these mounds (below) are also well-developed and easy to see.
Green-topped desert mounds in spring surrounded by barren rock rings at Kingsley
As summer sets in and the desert green fades to brown, desert mounds are harder to spot. This view (below) shows the same group of mounds near the Kingsley Cemetery in June, as the last spring wildflowers on top of the mounds are fading to brown for the year.
Tawny summer colors taking hold on a swarm of soil mounds near Kingsley
Tygh Ridge is a broad, uplifted fault that forms the north wall of Tygh Valley and the lower White River canyon. The south side of the fault is steep, dropping abruptly into Tygh Valley and Deschutes River canyon, while the north slope is broad and gentle, extending nearly 10 miles toward Dufur. Because of its geology and gentle slope, the north side of Tygh Ridge provided the perfect conditions for thousands of ice age desert mounds to form. Though many have disappeared under plowed fields, thousands remain.
The aerial view in the following schematic (below) shows the swarms of mounds that seem to flow down the slopes of Tygh Ridge, and also how the mounds stretch into oblong shapes as slopes steepen into the ravines that radiate from the ridge.
A closer look at Tygh Ridge from the air (below) shows the relationship of mound shapes and orientation to the sloping terrain of the ridge. The mounds do seem to be “flowing” downhill. In a way they are, but only to the degree that the freeze-thaw sorting process that created these features was also shaped by gravity.
A closer aerial view (below) of this area on Tygh Ridge shows the order of the mounds strikingly, with longer mounds marking slopes and round mounds formed were the terrain is flatter. These patterns and the predictable order of the mounds on Tygh Ridge clearly defies the “gopher theory” that has found new life among scientists.
The desert mounds here are plainly too ordered and predictable to be the work of gophers. Did gophers build soil mounds elsewhere in the world? Possibly. But the patterns we see in the Columbia Basin seem best explained by on-the-ground, freeze-thaw research by John Pyrch and Clark Nelson.
The desert mounds on Tygh Ridge are everywhere, though much less obvious on the ground than in aerial photos. This scene (below) shows why. The crest of Tygh Ridge, which forms the backdrop in this view, is almost entirely covered in desert mounds, and yet their low profile and the gentle slopes nearly hide them when viewed from ground level.
Historic barn on the high slopes of Tygh Ridge
However, the closer you get to desert mounds on the ground, they more they begin to emerge in profile. These mounds on Tygh Ridge are typical, with wildflowers and bunch grasses established in the deep soil of the mound, and sparse growth in the rock rings that surround the mounds.
Mount Adams peeks between soil mounds on Tygh Ridge
Large areas along the north slope of Tygh Ridge remain unplowed, providing one of the best field laboratories for further understanding the phenomenon of desert mounds. Because the area is uplifted, it’s also some of the highest terrain (ranging from 2,500 to over 3,000 feet) in the Columbia Basin to show the desert mound phenomenon, which also might be of value for future research.
Rock Stripes
Rock stripes are abundant on the slopes of Tygh Ridge in Butler Canyon
Tygh Ridge not only has impressive displays of desert mounds, it’s also home to some of the best rock stripe examples in the area. Once group is located on a prominent shoulder of Tygh Ridge in Butler Canyon, where OR 197 crosses the ridge.
Though this shoulder of Tygh Ridge (below) looks like an isolated bluff, it’s really just the end of a long ridge, with hundreds of desert mounds spread across the gentle crest of the ridge, out of view. It’s on the steep shoulders of the ridge that John Pyrch’s theory of rock stripes plays out. There is clearly no source of rock to feed these strips, and they are not migrating downhill like a talus slope might. Pyrch showed these to be are barely moving at all, in the absence of the ice age moisture and heavy freeze-thaw cycles that sorted them into stripes.
Rock stripes in Butler Canyon
A closer look (below) at rock strips on another shoulder of Tygh Ridge shows how the stripes correlate to the slope and to one other, marking the direction of the slope.
Rock stripes on Tygh Ridge
While not as clearly formed as their desert mound and rock ring cousins, there is order here, with the stripes alternating with long islands of soil that Pyrch and Nelson believe are simply soil mounds becoming increasingly elongated by gravity as they slopes they formed upon became steeper.
(Author’s note: do you know John Pyrch or Clark Nelson? I tried to located them for this article with no luck, but would love to hear from them!)
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The Desert Mound Tour!
View from below the Kingsley Cemetery
If you’re up for a road trip, there’s a lonely and scenic loop through the Tygh Ridge area that provides close-up looks at desert mounds, along with sweeping views of the Cascades (on a clear day). In May and June, the route is lined with wildflowers, but the trip is fascinating to explore through summer and fall, as well. A pair of nearly forgotten pioneer cemetaries along the way make for interesting stops, too, and both are filled with wildflowers in spring.
Though this makes for an easy day-trip in a car, it could also work as a bicycle tour for cyclists open to some well-maintained gravel roads mixed in with the paved sections. With the exception of a couple of OR 197 sections along the loop, there is little or no traffic to contend with — and even the highway is lightly traveled. This is lonely country!
Here’s a map of the loop, along with a link to a larger version to print for your trip:
The highlights of this 37-mile tour are keyed to the purple dots on the map and mileage for segments between the small orange dots is shown in the orange ovals. Here’s a segment-by-segment description of the tour:
1. From The Dalles, drive south on OR 197 for 8.7 miles to the Boyd Junction and turn left onto the Boyd Loop road. The tour begins here. Continue on this road toward Boyd.
Soon you will make a dogleg turn to the right through the tiny community of Boyd, then reach the beautiful Adkisson Bridge(A on the map) over Fifteenmile Creek. This historic 1925 structure was designed by Conde McCullough, the famed Oregon bridge engineer who designed most of the stunning bridges along the Oregon Coast Highway and several of the graceful bridge along the old scenic highway in the Columbia River Gorge. The nearby, historic Adkisson Mill completes the picturesque scene here. There’s a small pullout on the south side of the bridge.
Historic Adkisson Bridge designed by famed designer Conde McCullough
2. Reach a signed intersection with Dry Hollow Road 2.5 miles from Boyd Junction. Stay straight here and continue 6.2 miles up Long Hollow Road.
As travel through Long Hollow, you’ll notice the steep slopes of the hollow have kept the farmer’s plows mostly at bay, providing a glimpse of what the entire area once looked like, with sagebrush and wildflowers covering the desert landscape. In spring, blue Lupine and yellow Buckwheat are the predominate wildflowers here and throughout the tour. You might see deer and even antelope along this part of the tour, too, and the first desert mounds will come into view (shown on map).
A remnant of the natural desert landscape surives in Long Hollow
3. At a 3-way junction with Center Ridge Road and Tygh Ridge Road, turn right and begin following Tygh Ridge Road for the next 10.8 miles. This road is intially paved, but then turns to well-maintained gravel.
Immeidately after turning onto Tygh Ridge Road, watch for a wide shoulder pullout on a curve at the picturesque remains of the Nansene Community Hall (B on the map), located on the west (right) side of the road. This fading structure has its origins in the early 1900s when the area was still a center for sheep ranching. Now, it stands as the sole reminder of the community of Nansene, and its main residents are the hundreds of barn swallows that swoop in and out of the building and serenade visitors.
Historic Nansene Community Hall and Mount Hood
In spring, the meadows opposite the community hall (on the east side of the road) are filled with blue lupine and a view down Oak Creek Canyon toward the Deschutes River. There are great views of the meadow from along the fenceline, so please respect private property here. The view from Nansene also includes four Cascade volcanoes on a clear day: Mount Jefferson, Mount Hood, the top of Mount St. Helens and Mount Adams!
Continuing south on Tygh Ridge Road, several desert mounds appear along both sides of the road. Watch for the quarry described earlier in this article if you’d like to inspect soil mounds that have been dissected. The soil mound quarry(C on the map) is on the east side of the road. This is private land and may be gated, though the quarried mounds are visible from the main road.
Where Tygh Ridge Road turns to gravel, look to your left for a picturesque, abandoned farmhouse (D on the map) that dates back to the days of sheep ranching, but please observe private property here. There’s a pullout on the right side, opposite the farmstead.
Abandoned farmhouse along Tygh Ridge Road
Continue on Tygh Ridge Road as it gradually turn to the west, and begins to parallel the crest of Tygh Ridge (the long, gentle ridgeline to the south with communication towers marking its summit). Tygh Ridge and nearby Tygh Valley were named for the native peoples who lived in the area before white settlement in the mid-1800s.
In 1845, Tygh Ridge also saw the ill-fated Stephen Meek party pass through in a harrowing effort to reach The Dalles after losing their way on the Meek’s Cutoff. The “cutoff” was a supposed shortcut along the Oreogn Trail, but it turned into a dead end for the 200 wagons and 1,000 white emigrants in Stephen Meek’s party when they reached the chasm of the Deschutes Canyon. At this point, the party had come to realize that Meek had never traveled the route and they were now lost.
Mountain man Stephen Meek in the 1860s
Starving and desperate, the Meek party crossed the Deschutes River at Sherar’s Falls, using ropes to haul their dissembled wagons across in an effor that took two weeks. From there, they somehow scaled Tygh Ridge with the help of a rescue party and eventually reached The Dalles.
Dozens died along the disatrous Meek’s Cutoff trek, and many more died of exhaustion after reaching the The Dalles in October 1845. As you travel across the sweeping north slopes of Tygh Ridge, it’s easy to imagine these weary emigrants to Oregon making their way across this terrain in creaky wagons. Their story was made into the acclaimed film “Meek’s Cutoff” in 2010.
In the westward section of Tygh Ridge Road, the continuous view sweeps from Mount Hood to Mount Adams on a clear day. Watch for a rustic, century-old barn on the left (E on the map) and several wildflower meadows and swarms of soil mounds and their accompanying rock rings on the right (F on the map) in this section of the tour.
4. Continue following Tygh Ridge Road until you reach OR 197. Turn left here in the direction of Tygh Valley, following the highway for 1.6 miles south to Dufur Gap Road, just beyond the Tygh Summit marker. Turn right to continue the tour on Dufur Gap Road.
You will now enter the Kingsley portion of the tour, which has some of the most accesible and interesting desert mounds in the area. There are several mounds in a swarm located along the east (right) side of Dufur Gap Road. This quiet road was the original highway through the area until it bypassed in the 1960s by the modern OR 197.
5. After traveling 1.2 miles on paved Dufur Gap Road come to the junction with Kingsley Road. Turn left (west) and follow gravel Kingsley Road for the next 2.6 miles.
As you continue through the Kingsley district, you’ll pass more swarms of desert mounds that have survived the plows. I’ve dubbed one group of these mounds (G on the map) as the “Garden Mounds”, as they are topped with a beautiful display of wildflowers in spring and frame a nice view of Mount Hood (see photo, below).
“Garden Mounds” along Kingsley Road with Mount Hood on the horizon
You probably won’t realize that Kingsley Road has became Hix Road at a bend by a farmhouse, but soon the route reaches a short paved section along this part of the tour, where Friend Road briefly joins Hix Road. There’s is an excellent group of desert mounds and rock rings at this intersection (H on the map), with views south to Mount Jefferson and Postage Stamp Butte. The latter is the broad western extent of Tygh Ridge and once had a fire lookout on the summit. The mounds here have especially well-developed rock rings and vernal pools in winter and spring.
6. From the junction with Friend Road, continue north along a brief paved section, then keep straight where paved Friend Road veers left and gravel Hix Road heads north. Continue on Hix Road for the next 4.0 miles.
Heading north on Hix Road you’ll pass another farmhouse on the right before reaching a sharp right turn, where a rough, dirt road heads off to the left toward a stand of Ponderosa pine on a low crest. If you love pioneer cemeteries but fear deep ruts, I recommend parking on the shoulder here and making short walk up this road to the pioneer Kingsley Cemetery (I on the map). Thanks to the rough access road, this is one of the loneliest places around, and in spring, yellow Balsamroot fill the cemetery. Mount Hood is big on the horizon and there are also some nice soil mounds bordering west and south sides of the cemetery.
Just beyond the dirt road spur to the Kingsley Cemetery, watch for the Kingsley Catholic Cemetery on the north side of the road (J on the map). Park on the north shoulder for a short walk to tour this beautiful pioneer cemetery, where the views on a clear day include Mount Hood, Mount St. Helens and Mount Adams. Soil mounds border this cemetery, as well, and are covered with blue Lupine and yellow Buckwheat in late spring.
Kingsley Catholic Cemetery
The family plots in Kingsley Catholic Cemetery include a surprising number of grave markers for children, a poignant reminder that at the turn of the 20th Century the child mortatilty rate was nearly 1 in 5 in our country, thanks to deadly childhood diseases that have since been nearly eliminated by modern vaccines.
As you resume the tour heading northeast on Hix Road, you’ll pass still more swarms of soil mounds on the right and a couple more ranches as the road makes a gradual descent to Mays Canyon. On the far horizon, you can pick out the wrinkled Columbia Hills that mark the north wall of the Columbia River Gorge and some of the hundreds of modern, white windmills that now rise along the ridges of the Columbia Basin.
7. Reach a junction with paved Dufur Gap Road 4.0 miles from where Hix Road left paved Friend Road. Head left on Dufur Gap Road and travel 1.7 miles to a junction with OR 197.
This section of Dufur Gap Road travels through Mays Canyon, where you will pass several farm homes and likely see deer and possibly antelope along the way, as well as the distinctive magpies that are common in Oregon’s desert country.
You may also have noticed burned trees scattered throughout the Kingsley and Mays Canyon segments of the tour. These were victims of the massive Substation Fire that burned nearly 80,000 acres in July 2018. Though the ground was blackened across much of the area, wheat fields and wildflower meadows have since covered most traces of the fire in just two years, with only the scattered tree snags to remind us of the event.
8. At the junction with OR 197, turn left onto the highway and continue north 2.5 miles to Dufur, forking left onto Dufur Valley Road where a sign points to Dufur, and staying straight when the town of Dufur comes into view.
Be sure to make a stop at the Historic Balch Hotel(K on the map), which offers vintage lodging and fine meals. It’s the large brick structure on the right as you pull into this small town. Dufur has lots to offer, and makes a nice lunch stop for the tour, including a city park for picnicking.
Historic Balch Hotel in Dufur
If you make the tour during the second week of August, you’ll miss the spring wildflowers but be just in time for Vintage Dufur Days — known to old-timers as the Dufur Threshing Bee. And remember, when John F. Kennedy visited Dufur during his 1960 presidential campaign, he famously challenged the locals with “Ask not what Dufur can do ‘fer you, but rather, what you can do ‘fer Dufur!”
9. Continue through Dufur and rejoin OR 197 on the north end of town. Turn left toward The Dalles and head 3.9 miles to the Boyd Junction, which concludes the tour loop. Continue north on OR 197 to return to The Dalles.
The last secion of the tour follows OR 197 through more ranch country, but if you’re still up for another pioneer cemetery stop, don’t miss the well-maintained Dufur Community Cemetery (L on the map), located on the west (left) side of the highway, just north of Dufur. Watch or a grove of locust trees, the somewhat hard to spot cemetery driveway is just beyond. Graves here date back to the 1860s and trace some of the earliest white settlement in Oregon, when Dufur was along the Barlow Road route used by white settlers to reach the Willamette Valley. Mount Hood fills the western horizon on a clear day.
Big Jim’s Drive-in is a local institution in The Dalles
Still feeling hungry before the drive home? No trip to The Dalles is complete without a stop at Big Jim’s Drive-in, located just west of OR 197 on Highway 30, near the I-84 interchange. It has been a comfort-food institution in The Dalles since the 1960s.
You can go fancy at Big Jim’s with salmon and chips (or even grilled wild salmon!), but I recommend starting with the Jim Dandy burger basket. The house fries are excellent, and if you’re an onion ring fan, be sure to request the upgrade for $1 (or order both! You won’t regret it… though your cardiologist might). In our pandemic era, Big Jim’s has patio seating, a drive-thru and you can even call an order in from a marked space in their parking lot and have it delivered to your car window.
Trail hazards of Biblical proportions? Not quite… but still worth avoiding! (“Four Horses of the Apocalypse” by Viktor Vasnetsov)
As our public lands begin to reopen this spring, a “revelation” (…ahem!) occurred to me that I should post a reminder of the four notable hazards that explorers in WyEast Country should be aware of as they head into the wilds — especially the Columbia River Gorge.
Though not quite on the epic scale of the Biblical quartet of Death, Famine, War and Conquest (arriving on horseback!), these trail threats are real for hikers and should (and can easily) be avoided. I’ve written detailed articles on a couple of our local “horsemen” in the past, and you’ll find links within this article if you’re looking for a deeper dive. The fourth “horseman” is lesser known, will likely be a surprise to you, so read on!
The First Horseman: Ticks
Several tick species are expanding their range in Oregon, so it’s a fact of life that we all need to accept and build health and safety routines into our outdoor activity. I posted this longer article on ticks several years ago:
This article continues to be the most-read post on the blog, viewed 185,000 times and counting! That’s a good sign that people are aware of the threat and becoming more knowledgeable. Unfortunately, it’s also true that a LOT of misguided and potentially dangerous misinformation and folklore about ticks is out there, so that’s why I posted the original piece.
Wood tick “questing” for CO2 emissions betraying a potential host (Bay Area Lyme Foundation)
While tick bites can be painful and become infected, the more serious concern is Lyme Disease. Not long ago, it was a distant worry for Oregonians, but over the past decade several cases have been reported from tick bites in Oregon, including in the eastern Columbia River Gorge. Therefore, every hiker should become familiar with the symptoms of Lyme Disease and how to react if they appear after a tick bite — this is also covered in my earlier article on Ticks.
How to avoid: Ticks are thick in the dry forests and open meadows of the Columbia River Gorge, mostly east of Cascade Locks. They seem to be most abundant in the area between Hood River and The Dalles. When hiking in this area, always wear long pants, ideally tucked into your socks, long sleeves and avoid lingering in tall grass or brush, as this is prime tick habitat.
Ticks find us by detecting the CO2 we emit, and they simply wait on a stem of grass or twig for us (or a deer, or any other red-blooded host) to pass by, and jump on when we brush against them. Ticks are in the arachnid family, and like their spider cousins, have eight legs. Through a behavior known as “questing”, ticks hold their front legs up to function as CO2 antennae when stalking a host (below), and simply climb on when one wanders by.
Deer Tick “questing” (University of Rhode Island)
Once onboard, ticks move quickly to locate uncovered skin and latch on to their host to feed on blood. While you might notice a tick biting you, you’re more likely to discover them when you get home from a hike, firmly embedded. So, everyone should do a complete body scan (with a hand mirror) followed by a shower after spending time in the Gorge, Clackamas Country or the sagebrush country east of Mount Hood.
Should you discover a tick, I recommend using the “Pro-Tick Remedy” tool (below) to remove it. I’m an infamous “tick magnet” and have pulled many of these unwelcome guests over the years. This simple tool works best, and it’s cheap — under $10 online. I carry one in every pack and even when I’m traveling. Tiny and effetive.
Forget the tweezers and folklore about burnt matches or kerosene, this little tool is optimized for tick removal — and comes with an attached magnifier for old folks like yours truly!
By the way, if you want to ensure you’ll bring ticks home from your next hike in the east Gorge, bring your dog! You probably won’t notice the ticks until they’re crawling around the car on the drive home, and even dogs with Advantix or similar protection can still carry plenty of ticks on their fur. I have three wonderful dogs, but I leave them home when I’m in tick country. It’s just safer for my pups and me!
The Second Horseman: Poison Oak
A beautiful and adaptive plant, our native Poison Oak occurs throughout the Columbia River Gorge, in Clackamas country and along Mount Hood’s east slope. We could even use this elegant plant in our gardens if… oh, right… it’s toxic! I posted this blog article on Poison Oak several years ago:
This piece continues to get heavy traffic every year, and it’s right behind the tick article as a most-read article, with over 84,000 views and counting! That’s good news, as awareness of its appearance and habitat is everything in coping with this plant.
“Leaves of three, let it be!” A lush patch of Poison Oak along the Wahkeena Falls trail.
Unlike ticks, Poison Oak is not stalking you… though sometimes it can feel that way when you find yourself in a dense thicket! But once you know how to spot the oak-shaped leaves, grouped in threes, it’s easy to spot and avoid. Poison Oak plant has three growth forms that are also important to recognize: it can grow as a low groundcover, in a thicket as a dense shrub and as a vine, climbing 30 feet or more up a tree trunk. All three forms develop from the same species and have the same leaf form, they are just adaptations of Poison Oak to its conditions.
Poison Oak prefers open forests, and especially forest margins along meadows or rocky outcrops. It can almost always be found among our iconic Oregon White Oak stands in the Gorge, where its leaves are easy to confuse with the true oaks. So, when hiking in White Oak country, just assume there’s Poison Oak, as well, and tread mindfully.
Poison Oak has oils on its leaves and in its stems (and roots) that are the source of skin reactions for so many of us. The plants are deciduous, so you’re much less likely to have a reaction during the winter months, though some have reported a reaction to even the bare stems. They are most toxic in spring, when their emerging, new foliage shines with oil.
Poison Oak along the McCord Creek Trail growing in the groundcover form
How to avoid: I’ve been hiking in the Gorge for the better part of a half-century, and have never had a reaction to Poison Oak. What does this mean? For starters, I know what it looks like, where it grows and I’m careful to avoid it, and I also wear long pants and long sleeves in Poison Oak country. But it could be that I’m immune — some people are. After all, I’ve certainly come in contact with Poison Oak many times, despite my best efforts to avoid it.
However, evidence suggests that once you do develop a skin reaction to Poison Oak, you are more likely to react from future exposure. This is at odds with one of the most pervasive (and dangerous) folklore remedies out there that you can create an immunity by intentionally developing a rash. Quite the opposite, and that’s good motivation for learning what Poison Oak looks like, avoiding it, and always washing up when you get home from a day in the Gorge.
Poison Oak on the McCord Creek Trail growing as vines that can climb thirty feet into the tree canopy
Research shows that plain old soap and water is just as effective in removing toxic oils as expensive chemicals sold as poison oak “cures”. The key is to act soon in removing any oils you might have picked up on exposed skin. I carry baby wipes in the car and to do a quick pass on exposed skin before the ride home, where I immediately take a soapy shower (after a tick check) to remove any remaining residue. All clothing from the hike goes straight to the wash with regular detergent. These simple steps are good prevention for both Poison Oak and ticks, so well worth incorporating into your hiking routine.
Did you know you can develop a Poison Oak reaction without ever touching a plant? It’s true. Just take your dog into Poison Oak country — especially off-leash, where you can’t monitor where Fido has been. Dogs aren’t so worried about counting those “leaves of three”, and why should they? Dogs (and cats) are immune to the oils. But the DO pick it up on their fur, later transferring it to unsuspecting owners on the ride home, or even days later to other people they encounter. So, it’s a good idea to leave your dog home when hiking in areas where Poison Oak is abundant.
The Third Horseman: Rattlesnakes
Our Western Rattlesnakes are a maligned lot. But as our only venomous snake, they are under-appreciated for the role they play controlling rodent populations. While Western Rattlesnakes occur throughout the Columbia River Gorge and much of WyEast country, they’re most common in the east Gorge and high desert country on the east slopes of the Cascades. The fear factor associated with rattlesnakes has led to these beautiful and beneficial creatures being heavily exterminated where their habitat overlaps ours, and they are losing that battle.
Bites from Western Rattlesnakes are rare, as these quiet predators are generally shy and avoid people. Most encounters come when hikers aren’t watching the trail ahead or traveling cross-country in rattlesnake country, and surprise or even step on one. Their strikes are almost always defensive, and preceded by a warning rattle. And they are often “dry” strikes without venom. While painful, their bites rarely cause serious tissue damage if treated within 18 hours, and death from a Western Rattlesnake bite is exceptionally rare.
Western Rattlesnake among the spring wildflowers at Dalles Mountain Ranch State Park
The Western Rattlesnake in the above photo was resting in patch of Lupine at Dalles Mountain Ranch when I came across him (her?) while exploring cross-country a few years ago. I was still at least six feet away when the rattling alerted me of its presence, and had time to set up my camera for a photo. I was never closer than four feet, and the rattlesnake simply waited me out. It was a typical encounter with this quiet species.
How to avoid: Rattlesnakes spend most of their daylight hours coiled up in a protected spot — near their dens, which are typically under a rock, log or sagebrush. When hiking (especially off-trail), simply watch your feet when you’re stepping over these natural protections. Even if you do encounter a Western Rattlesnake, you’re more likely to get an impressive warning rattle and a defensive, coiled posture than a strike. Only by stepping on one or deliberately provoking it are you likely to trigger a strike. Decent boots, boot socks and long pants are always a good idea when hiking. Rattlesnakes are just one more reason why, though quite low on the threat list compared to ticks and Poison Oak.
The Fourth Horseman: Green Blister Beetles
Here’s one you didn’t see coming! Sure, there are plenty of bugs that can bite or sting you in the outdoors, but if you don’t have bee allergies, these are mostly an itchy nuisance. But, then there’s the Green Blister Beetle. You’ve heard of these, right?
Green Blister Beetles in a Lupine meadow near Tygh Valley
Well, me neither — but I learned about them after encountering some in the field recently, and they have quite a storied AND toxic history. From the National Poison Control Center:
“Blister Beetles excrete a toxic blistering agent called cantharidin, which can cause irritation and blistering when it comes in contact with the eyes, skin, mouth, throat, or digestive tract. The irritation and blisters that form can be painful but usually are not life-threatening. Blister Beetles are notorious for their ancient use as an aphrodisiac. Not only is such use groundless, it can also be fatal.”
Cantharidin is also known as Spanish Fly, and has a long and deadly history of use as both a medicine and supposed aphrodisiac. When I encountered hundreds of Green Blister Beetles in a lupine meadow among sagebrush, near Tygh Valley, they struck me as both beautiful and interesting. But I’m glad I didn’t think to touch one, as I later learned how they earned their name. It’s worth reading the full warning at the National Poison Control center if you spend time hiking in east side meadows and sagebrush country:
How to avoid: Green Blister Beetles are easy to avoid. They’re not out to get you, and for the most part ramble around on vegetation stalking other bugs as prey. Like most beetles, they can fly short distances when disturbed, and in the off-chance one lands on you, the Poison Control Center recommends gently blowing it off (vs. flicking or picking it off) and washing any exposed skin it might have come in contact with.
Green Blister Beetles mating near Tygh Valley
But more importantly, I’ve included Green Blister Beetles as the Fourth Horseman because they are quite beautiful, and a natural magnet for young kids looking to catch bugs. The Poison Control Center warning includes a sobering story of a 10-month old infant becoming dangerously ill from eating one. So, if you’re taking youngsters on hikes on the east side, it’s an opportunity to teach them about these beetles and why they should never be handled… along with how to recognize Poison Oak!
Honorable Mention – Northwest Forest Scorpion
There’s only room for four “horsemen” here… but I couldn’t resist an honorable mention for our fearsome-looking Northwest Forest Scorpion here. While these rarely-seen creatures can have an uber-primal effect on people, our native species is relatively harmless. They just look scary! Biologists equate it to a bee sting which rarely requires medical attention — a welcome alternative to its deadly cousins found around the world!
Scorpion along the Tamanawas Falls Trail — intimidating to see, but not a serious hazard for hikers
Northwest Forest Scorpions are nocturnal, so you’re unlikely to ever encounter one. They belong to the Arachnid family, and spend their nights preying upon small bugs. Scorpions live in forested canyons throughout WyEast country, typically near water, and spend their days resting under rocks or logs. I came across the scorpion in the above photo while clearing a couple of large rocks from the Tamanawas Falls trail, and found this 4-inch specimen curled up underneath.
In recent years, a thriving colony of scorpions at the top of Angels Rest were spotted, and images and videos have been making the rounds in social media, triggering reactions from fascination to horror. But unless you handle or provoke one, the risk of a sting from our native scorpion is minimal.
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So, why the menacing title for this article? Mostly for fun, but also because the word Apocalypse comes from the Greek language, and describes “an unveiling of things not previously known.” Hopefully, this article has been a pint-sized “apocalypse” by that definition!
And while our four “horsemen” are certainly consequential hazards worth avoiding in WyEast Country, they shouldn’t stop anyone from enjoying the outdoors. Simple awareness and a few precautions do the job, and besides… that long highway drive to the trailhead is infinitely more dangerous than what you might encounter along the trail!
The Columbia River Gorge is so rich with natural beauty that it’s pretty hard to pick favorites. Yet, when it comes to graceful waterfalls cascading through verdant, rainforest canyons, Oneonta Creek is near the top of my list. A previous article on this blog presented a new vision for managing access to stunning Oneonta Gorge and restoring the historic Oneonta Tunnel. This article examines Oneonta Canyon above the Oneonta Gorge, where more waterfalls and rugged beauty brought thousands to the trails here before the 2017 Eagle Creek Fire.
Iconic Triple Falls on Oneonta Creek
The fire has since changed the Gorge landscape for most of our lifetimes, and the forest is just beginning a post-fire recovery cycle that has unfolded here countless times over the millennia. But while the starkness of the burned landscape is something that we are still adjusting to, the fire gives us a once-in-century opportunity to rethink and rebalance how we recreate in the Gorge.
Oneonta Creek experienced some of the most intense burning during the fire, and almost none of the dense forest canopy survived, and still the forest has already begun to restore itself. What can we do to restore our human presence at Oneonta in a way that will be sustainable for the next century, leaving a legacy for future generations like the one that we inherited?
Before the 2017 Fire: Signs of Stress
The spectacular scenery along the Oneonta Creek was already drawing huge, unsustainable crowds of hikers well before the Eagle Creek Fire roared through Oneonta Canyon, and the visible impacts were everywhere. Some of the impact was on the human environment, including the very trails and bridges that brought hikers into Oneonta Canyon. And some of the impact was on the land, itself, with hikers straying from developed trails to create destructive social paths and shortcuts in many spots. These informal trails had become badly eroded, often undermining the main trails, themselves.
Social trail damage near the lower Oneonta Creek footbridge
One place where these impacts escalated alarmingly in the years before the fire was the lower footbridge on Oneonta Creek, located just above Oneonta Falls and just below Oneonta Bridge Falls. As shown in the photo above, crowds of hikers had carved a new path to a pool in the creek at the west abutment of the bridge, stripping away fragile vegetation and filling the pool with eroded debris.
The photo below shows how this social path has not only destroyed the thin layer of soil and forest understory on the slopes of Oneonta Creek, but was also undermining the main trail, itself, which was gradually sliding down the slope.
Social trail eroding both the slope and the shoulder of the main trail (on the left)
Even the lower Oneonta footbridge was in trouble before the fire. The Forest Service began posting a warning on the bridge a few years before the fire limiting it to one hiker at a time, yet another reminder of the serious disinvestment we have been making in our Gorge trails for the past thirty years. The rapid growth in visitors during this same period only increased the impact on structures like this, which were long overdue for repair or replacement.
Warning sign for hikers approaching the lower Oneonta footbridge
Meanwhile, at the east end of the lower Oneonta Bridge, curious crowds had pushed a new social path upstream, past Oneonta Bridge Falls (below). Social paths form when hikers head off-trail in search of a new viewpoint or water feature. When more hikers the steps of the first, the increasing foot traffic gradually formalizes social until they become hard to distinguish from legitimate trails — except that they are rarely “built” in a way that is sustainable, and often bring serious harm to the landscape.
Social trail heading toward Middle Oneonta Falls from the lower Oneonta Creek bridge
Meanwhile, things were getting worse on the east side of the lower Oneonta Bridge, too, where hikers had cut the short switchback just above the bridge (below) to the point that it began collapsing before the fire closed the area to the public. Why do people do this? Mostly, it’s ignorance, inexperience and overcrowding, and often by children who are not getting needed guidance from parents on why this is not okay.
Heavy damage from shortcutting on this switchback at the east end of the lower Oneonta Creek bridge
Heading beyond the lower Oneonta bridge, another major social path had formed on the west side of the creek (below), where hikers had created a long shortcut directly down the canyon slope where a long switchback exists on the main trail. The damage here was obvious and quite recent when this photo was taken about 18 months before the fire. When social paths become this prominent, the damage begins to spiral, with new or inexperienced hikers mistaking them for a legitimate route, and further compounding the problem with still more foot traffic. The overcrowding on the Oneonta Trail only added to the spiraling effect.
Hikers shortcutting this switchback have created a new social trail nearly as wide as the main Oneonta Creek trail
While hikers were causing the bulk of the impact before the fire, Mother Nature was busy in Oneonta Canyon, too. The photo below was taken after the 2017 fire, and reveals a major landslide that began moving years before the fire. The slide extends from Oneonta Creek (where it has left a pile of trees and debris visible in this photo) to the cliffs well above Oneonta Trail. A fifty-yard section of the trail was erased by the slide, with several efforts in the years just before the fire to stabilize a new route above the old trail.
Landslide along the middle section of Oneonta Creek that threatens long-term viability of the current trail
Here’s a view (below) of the landslide looking downhill toward Oneonta Creek from where the original Oneonta Creek Trail was once located. The big trees still standing in the path of the landslide in this view were burned in the fire, which will further destabilize this slope and allow the slide to accelerate in coming years.
Looking down the landslide toward Oneonta Creek in 2015, before the fire
When the original section of the Oneonta Trail was swept away by the landslide, the Forest Service built this set of stairs (below) to a new crossing of the slide, about 30 yards uphill from where the old trail had been.
Bypass trail built to temporarily navigate the Oneonta Trail landslide
This photo (below) shows the new, temporary crossing of the slide as it existed before the fire, but volunteer trail crews visiting the Oneonta Trail earlier this year report that this temporary route has also become eroded since the fire. The continued instability of the landslide raises real questions about whether a safe route can be maintained here in the near-term.
Wide angle view of the temporary route built across the landslide a few years before the 2017 Eagle Creek Fire
Landslides like this are an ongoing part of the Gorge geology, but in this case, it also marks a spot where an increasingly busy social path dropped down to Middle Oneonta Falls. The growing traffic to this off-trail falls was already taking its toll on the terrain before the slide. So, was the landslide triggered by erosion along the social path? There’s no way to know, but it’s certainly possible that the social path contributed to the sudden instability of the slope.
On my last visit to the upper Oneonta Canyon before the 2017 fire, I ran into bit of trail legend named Bruce, who was a longtime trail worker in the Gorge dating back to the 1980s. He was rebuilding the approach to the slide, and we talked about how Forest Service crews were struggling to simply keep pace with the impact of growing crowds and shrinking agency staff for basic trail maintenance. Major repairs, like those required the slide, were completely overwhelming his crews.
Gorge trail crew legend Bruce (now retired) working near the slide on the Oneonta Trail in 2014
Bruce was wistful about the situation, as he was planning to retire soon, and the trails he had worked so hard on were not faring well as he prepared to turn them over to a new generation of trail workers.
Beyond the problematic landslide, the Oneonta Trail arrives at Triple Falls, an iconic destination that most hikers are coming here for. In the years before the fire, the overlook at Triple Falls was literally crumbling under the pressure from overuse. The photo below shows the view from the main trail, where a tangle of social paths cutting directly downslope to the badly eroded viewpoint can plainly be seen.
Widespread slope damage where a network of social trails has cut into the Triple Falls overlook
A well-graded spur trail provides access to the viewpoint, but few used it. Instead, most follow the steps of this hiker (below) and simply cut directly up the slope to rejoin the trail. Over the past decade, the damage from erosion here had increased alarmingly.
Another hiker adding to the impact of the social trails at the Triple Falls overlook in 2014
Earlier this year, the volunteer trail crews assessing the Oneonta Trail captured these views of the Triple Falls overlook, showing how the burned over landscape also offers a unique opportunity to rethink and rebuild this overlook trail before hikers are allowed to return.
The Triple Falls overlook was stripped bare by the Eagle Creek Fire (photo: Trailkeepers of Oregon)Triple Falls after the Eagle Creek Fire (photo: Trailkeepers of Oregon)
Just beyond Triple Falls, the Oneonta Trail crossed the creek on this upper footbridge (below), installed by volunteers and Forest Service crews about ten years ago.
Upper Oneonta Creek footbridge before the 2017 Gorge Fire
This year’s volunteer crews found that the 2017 fire hadn’t spared the upper bridge, as the photo below shows. This represents yet another opportunity to think about how the area will reopened. While the bridge provides critical link to the rest of the Oneonta Creek trail system, it also led to a growing network of eroding social paths on the east side of Triple Falls.
Upper Oneonta Creek Footbridge after the Gorge Fire (photo: Trailkeepers of Oregon)
Today, we have a unique opportunity for a reboot, with the canyon just beginning its post-fire recover and still closed to the public. As traumatic as the Eagle Creek Fire was for those who love the Gorge, having the forest burned away was like lifting a window shade on the terrain beneath the forest. Where the fire destroyed a dense forest, it also laid bare the underlying terrain and geology, providing a rare opportunity to plan for our Gorge trail system as it enters its second century.
For trail builders, it’s a perfect opportunity to take a good look at the land for opportunities to refine existing trails and to build trails for future generations of hikers. This includes adjusting existing trail alignments to more stable terrain and replacing social paths with sustainable trails that can help curious hikers explore the beauty of the area without harming it. The fire also cleared the forest understory, making trail building a lot easier.
A New Vision for Oneonta
With this unique opportunity in mind, this proposal focuses on a new loop trail along the middle section of Oneonta Canyon, where little known Middle Oneonta Falls has been hidden in plain sight over the century since the first trail was built here. Middle Oneonta Falls is among of the most graceful in the Columbia Gorge, and waterfall enthusiasts have long followed the steep, brushy social path that led to the falls. I made my first trip there in the late 1970s, when I was 16 years old, and returned many times over the years.
Though my photography skills were pretty rough 38 years ago, this is how Middle Oneonta Falls looked way back in 1982. This is also where the falls would first come into view on the proposed Oneonta Loop Trail
It’s hard to know why the original trail builders passed by Middle Oneonta Falls, and chose to route the main trail high above the falls. The falls can plainly be heard thundering in the forest below, and from one spot on the trail, the brink of the falls can be seen. But for most hikers, Middle Oneonta Falls remained unknown.
This proposal would change that, with a new loop that would not only lead hikers to Middle Oneonta Falls on a well-designed trail, but also take them behindthe falls! More on that, in a moment. Here’s the general location of the proposed loop (shown in yellow) as it relates to the existing Oneonta and Horsetail Creek trails (shown in green):
Why build a new loop trail at Middle Oneonta Falls? One reason is pragmatic: the word is out, and this beautiful waterfall is no longer a secret, as well-worn social paths prove. And, with the forest now burned away, the falls will be plainly visible from the main Oneonta trail, making it impossible to prevent new social paths from forming as curious hikers look for a way to reach the falls.
Given these realities, this concept also focuses on how to make a new loop trail to Middle Oneonta Falls one that provides a new and much-needed destination for casual hikers and families with young kids looking for something less strenuous than what a lot of Gorge hikes require. Loops are the most popular trail option for hikers, too, since they provide a continuous stream of new scenery and adventure.
In the long-term, loops also offer a management tool that is seldom used today, but has great merit in heavily traveled places like the Gorge: one-way trails. On crowded trails in steep terrain, one of the biggest impacts comes from people simply passing other hikers coming from the option direction, gradually breaking down the shoulders of trails over time. One-way trails eliminate this problem, and the provide a better hiking experience with less sense of crowding, too.
With these trail themes in mind, what follows is a tour of the proposed Oneonta Loop Trail, using an exceptional series of aerial photos captured by the State of Oregon in the aftermath of the Eagle Creek Fire.
The first view (below) captures the existing Oneonta Canyon trail system from Oneonta Falls to Triple Falls, with the proposed new loop trail shown in yellow. The new loop trail would follow the more stable east side of Oneonta Canyon, avoiding the landslide on the west side (which is also shown on the map).
As the above map shows, another benefit of the proposed loop is that it could also serve as a reroute for the existing Oneonta Creek Trail if it becomes impossible to maintain a trail across the landslide, as the new loop would connect to the main trail upstream from the slide.
The next series of maps walk through the proposed loop trail in more detail, starting at the bottom, where the new trail would begin where a social path already extends into the canyon from the lower Oneonta Bridge (below).
From there, the route to Middle Oneonta Falls is surprisingly straightforward (below), and quite short — less than one-half mile. This would make the falls an easy destination for young families and hikers who don’t want to tackle the longer and more strenuous climb to Triple Falls.
Once at Middle Oneonta Falls (below), the new trail would take advantage of the huge cavern behind the falls to avoid building and maintaining another trail bridge, and simply pass behind the falls, instead.
For hikers coming from the Horsetail Falls trailhead, this would also be the second behind-the-falls experience, having already passed behind Ponytail Falls along the way. This would make the hike to Middle Oneonta Falls a magnet for families with kids, as nothing quite compares with being in a cave behind a waterfall for young hikers!
After passing behind Middle Oneonta Falls, the new loop trail (below) would climb the west slope of Oneonta Canyon just upstream from the slide in a series of four switchbacks, and rejoin the main trail. From there, hikers could continue on to Triple Falls or turn back to the trailhead to complete the new loop.
The next few schematics show how the trail would pass behind beautiful Middle Oneonta Falls. The first view (below) is from slightly downstream, and shows the forested bench opposite the falls where the new trail would descend toward the cave.
The next view (below) is from the base of the cliffs at the west side of the falls. The big boulder shown in the previous schematic should help you orient this view, as it is marked in both schematics. This view provides a better look into the cave, which is made up of loose river cobbles and well above the stream level in all but the heaviest runoff. Note my fellow waterfall explorer behind the 90-foot falls (!) for scale.
A third schematic of the falls (below) is from further downstream. This view gives a better sense of the large bench in front of the falls where the approach trail would be located, and how the exit from the cave would navigate a narrow spot between the creek (by the “Big Boulder”) and cliffs on the west side of the falls.
As the photos in these schematics show, this is an exceptionally beautiful spot, and though it is now recovering from the fire, it would still make for an easy and popular new destination in the Gorge. Would more visitors make it less pristine? Perhaps, but on my last trips to Middle Oneonta Falls I had to clean up campfire rings built directly adjacent to the creek and carry out beer cans and trash, so it’s also true that legitimizing the trail here would bring “eyes on the forest that would help discourage this sort of thoughtless damage.
Further upstream, there’s also work to do at Triple Falls. This map (below) shows how the main trail could be relocated to follow the existing (and seldom used) spur to the viewpoint and be extended to simply bypass the section of existing trail that drives creation of social trails.
This would provide a long-term solution to the maze of social paths that have formed between the existing trail and the Triple Falls viewpoint. This is a very simple fix, and should be done immediately, while the area is still closed to hikers and the burned over ground and exposed rock make trail construction much easier.
What would it take?
The entirety of Oneonta Canyon is within the Mount Hood National Forest, but administered by the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area (CRGNSA) unit of the Forest Service. Despite the creation of the scenic area in 1986 as a celebration of the beauty of the Gorge, there have been no new trails on Forest Service lands in the western Gorge for more than three decades. In fact, the agency has periodically proposed abandoning some of the lightly used backcountry trails in the Mark O. Hatfield Wilderness that have fallen behind in maintenance.
Oneonta Creek scene before the fire near Triple Falls
The Forest Service is reacting to a long period of strained recreation budgets dating back to the 1990s, but our recent history of disinvestment should not prevent us from looking ahead to the needs of this century. The lack of a future vision is part of what prevents new trails from being designed and built, as there are already plenty of ideas for new trails that could be sustainably built in the western Gorge to help take pressure off the existing system.
The last new trail built in this part of the Columbia River Gorge is the Wahclella Falls loop, completed in 1988. Today, this wonderful loop trail is iconic and among the most beloved in the Gorge. But until the 1980s, a brushy, sketchy user path is how hikers reached Wahclella Falls. Recognizing the need to formalize an official trail, the Forest Service worked with volunteers who completely rebuilt the old trail and added a new leg on the west side of the canyon, creating the well-designed, exceptional loop we know today.
Tiny Maidenhair spleenwort (for scale, the larger fronds at the top of Licorice fern!) are as uncommon as they are beautiful, and are found along the Oneonta Creek Trail near Triple Falls
This proposal for an Oneonta Loop trail would be a great candidate for a similar effort, with Forest Service and volunteer workers creating a new trail that would not only provide a much-needed trail option in the western Gorge, but that would also remedy the social trails that have developed and potentially serve as a new, main route if the landslide on the current trail cannot be stabilized.
In the aftermath of the Eagle Creek Fire, now is a perfect time to reboot trail building in the Gorge and Oneonta would be the perfect spot to get started. The area is still closed to the public, and trail volunteers have already begin scouting the trail to assess fire damage and make plans for repairs. This scouting work could be expanded to site the new loop trail, and there’s no better way to bring volunteers to trail projects than to build new trails.
Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) crews building the cliff-hugging trail above Elowah Falls in 1936
And finally, consider this: almost all of the trails in the Columbia Gorge (and the rest of Mount Hood National Forest) were built over the course of just two decades, in the 1920s and 30s. Amazingly, the system we have today is less than half of what was existed before the industrial logging era began after World War II. And in that period of decline, few new trails were added.
While forest trails were initially built as basic transportation for forest rangers, the Great Depression brought a new focus on recreation and enhancing our public lands through the work of the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCA) and Works Progress Administration (WPA). Our best trails were built during this golden age of trail construction, when trails were designed to thrill hikers with amazing views and adventures. These federal workforce program were put in place under Franklin D. Roosevelt as part of the national recovery plan, when unemployment during the Great Depression exceeded 20 percent, with no end in sight.
Sound familiar? Our normally gridlocked U.S. Congress has just allocated nearly $4 trillion in emergency funding to shore up the country as an unprecedented Coronavirus pandemic takes hold. And congressional leaders are already proposing more stimulus funding in the form of public infrastructure to continue pumping money into the economy and creating work for the jobless. Are we on the brink of another trail-building renaissance in our national forests? Quite possibly — but only if we begin planning for that possibility now.
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And one more thing…
There is a LOT of confusion about place names on Oneonta Creek. USGS topographic maps show only Oneonta Falls and Triple Falls, but Oneonta Falls is shown where Middle Oneonta Falls is located. This is clearly a map error, though one that has endured (and confused) for a very long time. In fact, Oneonta Falls is the tall, narrow falls at the head of Oneonta Gorge and is identified as such in early photos of the Gorge taken long before anyone knew much about the upper canyon.
A case of mistaken waterfall identity at Oneonta…
Meanwhile, there’s a small waterfall right in front of the lower Oneonta footbridge that is often called “Middle Oneonta Falls”, only because it’s in plain sight and so few know that there’s a much larger “Middle Oneonta Falls” just a half-mile upstream. Fortunately, the USGS got Triple Falls right!
So, for the purpose of this article (and in general), I refer to the small falls by the lower footbridge as “Oneonta Bridge Falls”, just to clear things up a bit. Creative, right? Well, neither is “Triple Falls”! Or “Middle Oneonta Falls”, for that matter! But at least we know which waterfalls we’re talking about. Remember, there’s no detail too small for THIS blog!
The Newton Clark Glacier flows from Mount Hood’s east face
High on Mount Hood’s broad east face is the Newton Clark Glacier, third largest of the twelve named glaciers on the mountain. Many assume a hyphen must be missing in what appears to be two surnames, especially since the two major glacial outflows from this glacier are separately known as Newton Creek and Clark Creek. Who is this Newton character… and what about Clark?
Instead, it turns out that Newton Clark was just one man who made his place in local history as one of the early surveyors mapping the Mount Hood area. And in a rarity among place names in Oregon, his full name made it to our maps, where our modern naming rules limit honorary place names to surnames. It also turns out that nearby Surveyor’s Ridge, with its popular mountain biking trail, is also named for Newton Clark, albeit anonymously.
Topo map of the Newton Clark Glacier on Mount Hood’s east face
The sprawling glacier named for Newton Clark is unique among Mount Hood’s glaciers: it’s wider than it is long! While glaciers like the Eliot, White, Coe and Reid flow down the mountain in rivers of ice, the Newton Clark Glacier is draped like a big ice blanket on the east face of the mountain high atop a steep bench formed by the Newton Clark Prow, a massive lava outcrop that prevents the glacier from flowing any further down the mountain.
The Newton Clark Prow splits the glacier into its twin canyons, Clark Canyon to the south and Newton Canyon on the north. At nearly 8,000 feet in elevation, this jagged rock outcrop once divided a much larger ice age glacier into two rivers of ice that left today’s massive Newton Clark Moraine behind, a medial moraine that once had rivers of ice as high as the moraine flowing on both sides (you can read more on that topic in this blog article). Today, the Newton Clark Prow forms the rugged head of Newton Canyon, with summer meltwater from the glacier tumbling over its cliffs in dozens of waterfalls.
The broad Newton Clark Glacier is bordered on the north by Cooper Spur, a long, gentle ridge that extends from Cloud Cap to the summit of Mount Hood. At 8,514 feet, the summit of Cooper Spur is among the highest points in Oregon that can be reached by trail, and one of the more popular hikes on the mountain. The view from the top of Cooper Spur provides a close-up look the rugged, crevassed surface of the Newton Clark Glacier.
The Newton Clark Glacier from Cooper SpurGiant ice pinnacles known as seracs are pushed into the air by this icefall on the Newton Clark Glacier
From below, the Newton Clark Glacier actually looks stranded (below), sitting unusually high on the mountain, with its crevasse fields spreading out in multiple directions as the glacier sprawls above the cliffs of the Newton Clark Prow.
The Newton Clark Glacier and Prow as viewed from Newton CanyonRare, close-up view of the Newton Clark Prow (photo: Chip Down)
Downstream, the Newton and Clark canyons eventually merge at the southern foot of the Newton Clark Moraine, where the flat, mile-wide floor of the East Fork Hood River valley begins. Here, the arms of the ice age ancestor of the Newton Clark Glacier continued for miles down the mountain toward Hood River, creating the broad, U-shaped valley we travel today on the OR 35 portion of the Mount Hood Loop Highway.
Newton and Clark creeks don’t quite merge as the converge at the foot of the Newton Clark Moraine
Surprisingly, the two glacial outflows don’t merge on the valley floor. Instead, they each flow into the East Fork Hood River separately, about a mile apart. Both Newton and Clark creeks are notoriously volatile glacial streams, each changing course on the floor of the East Fork valley during recurring flood events.
Of the two outflows, Newton Creek is the largest and most volatile stream, repeatedly sending massive debris flows down the East Fork Hood River valley over the years and washing out OR 35 in the process (more on that later). Clark Creek is less violent, but still a powerful glacial stream that challenges Timberline Trail hikers attempting to ford it during the summer glacial melt.
Now that we’ve met the Newton Clark Glacier and its sibling streams, what about the man behind the name?
Who was Newton Clark?
Newton Clark in the 1880s
Newton Clark was born in Illinois in 1838 and soon moved as a child with his family to Wisconsin as pioneer settlers. Clark spent his youth there, becoming an exceptional student and later studying surveying at the Point Bluff Institute.
In October 1860, Newton Clark married Scottish immigrant Mary A. Hill, and the two resided in North Freedom, Wisconsin. Just one year later, in September 1861, 23-year old Newton enlisted in the 14th Volunteer Infantry, Company K Wisconsin volunteers of the Union Army. His company served in 14 battles under General Ulysses. S. Grant in Civil War battles across the south.
Newton Clark in the early 1900s
Like so many in their Civil War generation, young Newton and Mary’s married life was put on hold during his four years of service. Mary remained in Wisconsin with their young daughter during Newton’s infantry service, undoubtedly anxious for her young husband’s return from our nation’s deadliest war.
When he left for battle, Newton said “If I never come back remember that you have our little Minnie to live for, work for her and she will be a comfort to you.” Newton later returned from battle, but their little Minnie died during his time away at war.
Newton Clark served as Quartermaster during his Civil War enlistment, and he furnished the flag that was raised above the Vicksburg, Mississippi courthouse when the war was ended on May 9, 1865. After the war, Newton was an active veteran with the Grand Army of the Republic (G.A.R.) fraternal organization. The above portrait above was taken late in is life, and proudly shows his G.A.R. insignia.
Detailed view of the G.A.R. insignia worn in the late 1800s
The G.A.R. was much more than what we think of with today’s fraternal organizations. Following the Civil War, the G.A.R. emerged as among the first and largest advocacy group on the nation’s political scene, dedicated to both political causes and the benevolent interests of their veteran members.
The G.A.R. was an important arm of the Republican Party (at the time, the progressive party in American politics), and in this capacity the organization was deeply involved in the reconstruction that followed the war. Among their efforts, the G.A.R. actively promoted voting rights for black Civil War veterans. They also became a racially integrated organization at a time when the emerging Jim Crow era was about to stall civil rights in this country with another century of racial segregation and persecution of black Americans. At its political peak in the late 1800s, the G.A.R. had nearly half a million members.
The G.A.R. Monument in Washington, D.C., located on Pennsylvania Avenue across from the National Archives (Wikipedia)
The G.A.R. also focused on advancing Republican candidates to public office and promoted patriotism and veteran’s rights across the country. This included providing pensions for veterans, creating hundreds of war memorials so that the Civil War might never be forgotten and establishment of Memorial Day as a national holiday, a legacy many of us celebrate without knowing of its origins.
In his later years, Newton Clark served as an officer in the Ancient Order of United Workmen (A.O.U.W.) for decades, a fraternal benefit society formed to provide mutual social and financial support for its membership after the Civil War. By the late 1800s, it was the largest fraternal organization in the country, and one that Newton continued to serve until his death.
Newton and Mary’s Life in the West
Newton Clark is identified in this photo taken at Twin Oaks Farm in the Hood River Valley in 1914 (back row, center, wearing a bow tie) (photo: Hood River History)
Soon after Newton’s return from his service in the Civil War, he and Mary moved west to the new Dakota Territory that had been created in 1861, just as the Civil War erupted. There, the Clarks farmed as pioneers in what is now the state of South Dakota.
The old Dakota Territory was massive, encompassing today’s North and South Dakota, most of Montana and the north half of Wyoming until statehood came to Wyoming and the Dakotas in 1888-89, long after the Clarks had moved again, this time to Oregon.
During their time in the Dakota Territory, Newton and Mary continued to have children, in the wake of losing their baby daughter Minnie, eventually adding two daughters and a son to their young family. The Clarks built the first frame house in Minnehaha County, where they farmed on a homestead located two miles from today’s town of Sioux Falls. Newton also worked as a surveyor of public lands for eight years, where he laid out the sections and townships in much of the Dakota Territory.
Newton Clark entered politics while in the Dakota Territory, too. He served as school superintendent, and was chairman of the board of county commissioners in Minnehaha county for several years before serving as a state legislator in the Dakota Territorial Legislator in the early 1870s. Newton Clark’s public service in the Dakota Territory put his name on the map of today’s South Dakota, with Clark County and the county seat of Clark, South Dakota named for him.
Mary Clark (on the far right) at a garden party in the 1910s (photo: Hood River History)
The grasshopper plagues that swept the high plains in mid-1870s eventually drove Clark from the Dakota Territory, and he continued his family’s migration west to Oregon in 1877. That year, he left Mary behind to care for the children in the Dakota Territory while he joined up his parents, Thomas and Delilah Clark, who had been living in Colorado.
Together, Newton and his parents traveled three months overland in the summer of 1877, arriving in the Hood River area on September 1. Mary Clark and their three children, William, Jeanette and Grace, eventually joined Newton and his parents in 1878, settling into their new home in Oregon.
Newton later said “I tried farming on my homestead in Dakota, but after two years of successful crops of grasshoppers, I became a disgusted with that form of agriculture and struck for Oregon, driving a team overland.”
Closer view of Mary Clark enlarged from the previous photo (photo: Hood River History)
Newton and Mary Clark arrived in Oregon with almost no money to their name, and set about creating a new life in Hood River. They were among the first pioneers to settle there, and Newton initially found work cutting cordwood and splitting shingles for other valley settlers. By 1878, he was able to purchase 160 acres on the west side of the Hood River Valley, where they built their family home. Newton’s parents built their home on an adjoining parcel.
Newton Clark said later of their new home “We found the Hood River Valley as nature had designed it and habited by a handful of the pioneers… the salubrity of the climate, its freedom from storms of wind and lightning of summer and its frigid blizzards of winter as compared with the Dakotas, all delighted us.”
Newton soon began taking contracts with the federal government to survey public lands in the rugged western and southern parts of Hood River County, establishing the section lines in the Upper Hood River Valley and surrounding mountain country that are still the basis of our maps today. Most of these areas would become part of today’s Mount Hood National Forest. Loggers in the early 1900s were still reporting survey marks on trees left by Newton Clark’s crews more than 30 years later.
Many of the section lines (the grid system based on township and range) on this early 1900s map of the Hood River Valley were surveyed by Newton Clark in the 1880s
Like today’s immigrants to Oregon, Newton Clark was drawn to explore the unmatched scenery that we sometimes take for granted. He was among the first to summit Mount Hood and he was also a member of the first party of white men to set eyes on iconic Lost Lake.
Surveying and exploring in Mount Hood country the 1880s was difficult and dangerous. Trips into the mountains took days, with Clark’s crews carrying heavy supplies on their backs and packhorses. There were few trails, so much of the travel was cross-country, through dense, virgin forests.
Though not identified on the image, Newton Clark and Mary clearly appear beneath the arched window on the right in this photo taken at the Riverside Congregational Church in 1913 (photo: Hood River History)A closer view of the previous photo showing Newton Clark and Mary standing behind him, looking over his right shoulder (photo: Hood River History)Comparison of the known image of Newton Clark in 1914 at Twin Oaks (right) and 1913 Riverside Church photos (left), and it’s clearly Newton Clark in the Riverside photo (photos: Hood River History)Comparison of the early 1910s garden party photo (left) and 1913 Riverside Church photos (right), and we can clearly see Mary Clark standing just behind her husband (photos: Hood River History)
Like other pioneer explorers of Mount Hood, Clark eventually had a feature on the mountain named for him. For unknown reasons, his full name was used in naming the Newton Clark Glacier. Perhaps this was to prevent confusion with the many features in the West named for William Clark, of the Lewis and Clark Expedition? It remains among the few places in Oregon to feature the full name of its namesake.
The Clarks left Hood River in 1888 when Newton was elected Grand Recorder of the A.O.U.W., his beloved fraternal older, though he retained some of his property in the Hood River Valley until his death. He served in this capacity with the A.O.U.W. for the next 20 years, with the family living in downtown Portland in a house at “400 Broadway”. Under Portland’s historic address system, this would have been at the corner of Broadway and Stark, where the Hotel Lucia now stands today — in theory, as least.
This illustrated map from 1890 shows a home located at the southeast corner of Broadway and Start, a few blocks from the once iconic Portland Hotel that stood where today’s Pioneer Courthouse Square is located.
While the 1890 map seems to provide a plausible case for where the Clarks lived in Portland, the fact that today’s historic Hotel Lucia (once called the Imperial) was built in 1909 at this corner clouds that history. The Clarks moved back to Hood River that year, which might make a plausible case for a new hotel going up where home had been, but newspaper accounts show them living at the same home in Portland a few years later, with their daughter. So, more research is needed to know just where the Clarks lived in Portland.
The historic Hotel Lucia was originally the Imperial, built in 1909, a full nine years before Newton and Mary Clark lived on Broadway at the end of their lives
The family returned to Hood River in 1909 when Newton retired from his A.O.U.W. office and built a new home on a hill above town that became their retirement residence.
During these later years in Hood River, the Clarks spent summers at a cabin Newton built at Lake Lyttle on the Oregon Coast, in today’s town of Rockaway Beach. Unlike today’s travelers, they didn’t follow roads to Rockaway Beach. Instead, they took the new Oregon Pacific Railway that had recently opened a route through the Coast Range from Hillsboro to Tillamook.
It’s unknown if Newton’s parents joined him when the Clarks moved to Portland in 1888, but his father died in 1892 and historic accounts show his mother living with the Clark family in Portland when she died in 1905, at the age of 98. So, one possibility would be that Delilah Clark joined her son’s family when Thomas Clark passed away in 1892, though there are no history accounts to confirm this.
What is clear is that Newton was close enough to his parents to bring them west to Hood River with his family in 1877, and later, to bring his elderly mother into his home in Portland. Somewhere out there, a portrait of the extended Clark family exists, and I’m hopeful a reader of this article might be able to help with that.
Newton Clark’s Family
True to the era, less is known about Newton Clark’s wife, Mary, beyond her husband’s description of their life together. She was a native of Edinburgh, Scotland, and according to the historical accounts available, she shared Newton’s passion and determination in their adventurous life as pioneers.
Two of Newton and Mary’s children died while the parents were still living, baby Minnie in the early 1860s, while Newton was serving in the Civil War and later, their adult daughter Grace (Clark) Dwinell, in 1910.
Grace finished school in Portland after the family had relocated there in 1888, and became a West Side (now Lincoln) High School graduate. What history is recorded about Grace describes her as outgoing and with a beautiful singing voice that she would often entertain with at family gatherings.
West Side (which later became Lincoln) High School was located at 14th and Morrison in downtown Portland, seven blocks from where the Clarks live on Broadway. The school was completed in 1885, and opened while the Clarks were living in the neighborhood.The ornate, gothic-style West Side (later called Lincoln) High School as it appeared when Newton Clark and his family lived in the neighborhood. This impressive structure is among the many grand buildings built in downtown Portland in the 1800s that were later razed as the city continued its rapid growth.
Grace Clark met young Frank Dwinnell while on a trip to visit family in Wisconsin, and he followed her back to Portland, where the two married. They moved back to Wisconsin for a time and started a family, but sometime in the late 1890s, Grace contracted tuberculosis — then called “consumption” and the leading cause of death at the turn of the century.
At the time, Grace attributed her illness to the harsh climate in Wisconsin, and the family relocated back to Oregon. After initially recovering from the disease, her tuberculosis eventually returned and Grace died in 1910 at the age of 37. Her funeral was held at Newton and Mary’s new home overlooking Hood River. Frank Dwinnell later moved back to Wisconsin with their young son and daughter to be near his family.
Grace (Clark) Dwinnell’s grave in the Idlewild Cemetery in Hood River
Two of Newton and Mary Clark’s children survived them, including their son William Lewis Clark and daughter Jeanette (Clark) Brazelton. Jeanette’s life is the least documented of the three Clark children who survived childhood, except that she became Mrs. W.B. Brazelton and appeared to living with her parents in their Portland home at the time of their deaths in 1918. I was unable to discover more about her life or even where she was buried for this article, so hopefully a reader will have more of Jeanette’s history to share.
William Lewis Clark followed his father’s footsteps and became a prominent civil engineer in Oregon. William was eleven when the family moved west to Oregon, and after finishing school in Hood River, he worked on his father’s survey crews. At age 19, William went to work for the Northern Pacific Railroad and later the Southern Pacific, overseeing various construction projects across the West.
William Lewis Clark sometime around the turn of the 20th Century
William married Mary Ann Mabee in 1880 (later records show her as Estella Mabee), and the two would later have a son in 1899, Newton Mabee Clark, who would become a third-generation engineer in the Clark Family. Newton Mabee Clark attended Stanford University, graduating in 1916. He was enlisted in Stanford’s elite Student Army Training Corps, a unit of the U.S. Marines, and served in World War I. Newton M. Clark died in Seattle in 1975 and had no children.
In 1900, the year after his only son was born, William Lewis Clark left the railroads and became the City of Portland’s district engineer for next seven years. William returned with his family to Hood River in 1907, shortly before his parents made their own return to Hood River from Portland.
For the next ten years he worked in the flour and grain business for C.H Stranahan in Hood River before returning to public service in 1917 for the Oregon Highway Department, at a time when the Historic Columbia River Highway construction was in full swing.
William Clark’s grave in the Idlewild Cemetery in Hood River
William finished his career with the City of Hood River, serving as city engineer from 1922 to (apparently) his death in April 1930, at the age of 62. Mary Ann (also listed as Estella) Clark moved to Seattle sometime after William’s death, apparently to be near their own son. She died in 1950 at the age of 75.
Back to Portland to serve his beloved A.O.U.W
Historical accounts show that Newton and Mary had moved back to Portland in about 1914. He had been called back from retirement to once again serve Grand Recorder of his beloved A.O.U.W. in the wake of so many members of the organization being called to serve active duty in World War I. If this timeline is correct, the Clarks spent just five years in Hood River after their 1909 return, and the photos in this article of the Clarks taking part in community life in Hood River marked their final days living there.
Newton and Mary Clark both died in 1918, and remarkably, both were exactly 80 years and 24 days old at the time of their deaths. Newton died on June 21 of that year at his daughter Jeanette Brazelton’s home in Portland, which seems to be the home where Newton and Mary lived in during their previous 20 years in Portland. Despite a global influenza pandemic that year, Newton died of a “paralytic stroke”, according to historical new accounts.
The Riverside Community Church in Hood River today
Newton’s death was widely covered by newspapers in Portland and Hood River, and his funeral at Riverside Congregational Church in Hood River drew a large turnout from the community, including many of the surviving pioneers who had known the Clarks since the mid-1800s. However, Mary Clark was in failing health when her husband died, and she was unable to travel to Hood River to attend his service.
The Hood River Glacier published this tribute to Newton:
________________
Newton Clark
“A soldier, and a fighting one, for four years of his early manhood, and then a frontiersman, he experienced life as men of the following generations could not. It was a privilege to hear him recount tales of the days of the past. As everlasting as the hills and mountain crags he loved were the principles and rugged honesty of Newton Clark. He was loyal to the things he believed in and fought untiringly for their accomplishment.
“But few men knew that Mr. Clark had passed the age of 80 years. He walked with erectness and his step was firm. News of his death brought a shock of grief to all here last Friday. His comrades, men who knew him best, and loved him, and the families of pioneers, heard the sad news with pains of deepest regrets.
“Another of our pioneers has gone on the long trail, and we will miss him.”
The Hood River Glacier, June 27, 1918
________________
After the shock of Newton’s death, Mary seemed to be recovering and traveled to Hood River with Jeanette to visit their old home, returning in “better health and good spirits” according to news accounts. But on the morning of July 20, Jeanette found that her mother had died in the night at her home in Portland, just a month after Newton has passed away.
This tribute was published in the Hood River Glacier as the community mourned the loss of two of its most prominent pioneers:
________________
Newton and Mary Clark
“Married at North Freedom, Wisconsin on October 17, 1860, Mr. and Mrs. Newton Clark, of this city, have trodden the pathway of life’s long journey together longer than the most couples of Oregon. Yet few men or women who have not yet reached the three-score-and-ten mark are more active or vigorous than this sturdy couple, a typical product of the frontier and pioneer life.
“With all faculties alert and hale and hearty both are enjoying their old age. Both are possessed of an optimism and enthusiasm that youth might envy.”
The Hood River Glacier, April 6, 1916
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Though Newton and Mary Clark spent most of their years in Oregon living in Portland, their hearts were clearly in Hood River, where they had first carved out a life as Oregon pioneers. Not only did they choose to retire to Hood River (however briefly before Newton was called back to service), they also chose to be buried there, just a few steps from where they had buried their daughter Grace eight years before, and where their son William would be buried just twelve years after they died.
Newton Clark’s grave in the Idlewild Cemetery in Hood RiverMary Clark’s grave in the Idlewild Cemetery in Hood River, adjoining her husband’s burial spot
As I researched this article, I grew increasingly dumfounded that Newton Clark isn’t more celebrated in our local history. True, he does have a spectacular glacier named for him, which sure beats a street or local park, but his commitment to service puts him in rare company among the early pioneers in Oregon. Fortunately, his contemporaries recognized this and there are excellent historical accounts of his life, if only we take the time to discover them.
For the direct quotes from Newton Clark used in this article, I turned to a front-page interview and profile published on April 6, 1916 by the Hood River Glacier, just two years before his death. I’ve created a PDF of the entire article that [link=]you can read here.[/link]
For additional history, I turned to other news accounts from the era, as well as an excellent oral history largely written by Newton Clark, himself, in the History of Early Pioneer Families of Hood River, Oregon, compiled in 1913 by Mrs. D.M. Coon. Had these two efforts to record his life in his own words not been made, much of Newton Clark’s extraordinary contribution to our history would have ben lost to time.
And now, some unfinished business…
A Modest Proposal…
Newton Clark Glacier and the Newton Clark Moraine (center) after an early autumn snowfall on Mount Hood
Call it a burr under my saddle, but when I learned decades ago that Newton Clark was one man, not a hyphenation, it bothered me that the two outflow streams were each given one half of his name. It struck me as a combination of historical ignorance and a degree of disrespect behind that decision, wherever it came from. So, where did it come from?
My guess is that these were lighthearted names attached by an early forest ranger, long ago, when most of the features in our national forests were casually named with little thought that these names would stick for centuries to come. Perhaps even Barney Cooper, the first district ranger for the Hood River area, named these streams in the early 1900s? And if Barney came up with the names, then surely he knew Newton Clark personally? After all, Hood River was a very small community in those early days. Perhaps it was Newton Clark, himself, who came up with these names while out on a survey?
History doesn’t provide an answer, but a look at some of the earliest topographic maps (below) confirms that both Newton and Clark creeks were named by the 1920s, when the Mount Hood Loop Highway had been completed and visitors began pouring into the area.
1920s map of Mount Hood showing Clark and Newton Creeks already named at the time the Mount Hood Loop highway was completed (lower right corner)
Whatever the reason behind the names for this pair of streams, the fact is that place names are one of the best and most durable ways to preserve our history for future generations. That’s why the confusion these names might cause remains a problem, at least in my mind.
Thus, I have a modest proposal, and it’s quite simple: add one word to the name of each stream and you not only solve the potential confusion, you also give Mary Clark her due. After all, would Newton have managed his remarkable life without a remarkable partner like Mary? Of course not.
Therefore:
• Newton Creek should become Newton Clark Creek
• Clark Creek should become Mary Clark Creek
See how easy that is? And there’s some logic behind it, too, since Newton Creek carries the majority of the outflow from the Newton Clark Glacier.
Here’s how this would look on the topographic maps — easy fix!
A slightly modified map…
Of course, when it comes to geographic names, nothing is easy! The Oregon Geographic Names Board (OGBN) is a volunteer panel administered by the Oregon Historical Society that serves as the overseer of geographic names in our state. New names or changes to existing names must be approved by this panel, and among their various criteria are support for public agencies (in this case the Forest Service) and the following:
“If the proposed name commemorates an individual, the person must be deceased for at least five years; a person’s surname is preferred; and the person must have some historic connection or have made a significant contribution to the local area.”
The Clarks have certainly passed the 5-year requirement, 102 years after their deaths. The second part of this requirement could be more of a challenge, but the fact that the Newton Clark Glacier already contains the full name of a historic figure would be my argument for making another exception, here. The last part is easy, as the contribution the Clarks made to the area is undeniable and well documented. Most importantly, the proposed change would also clear up potential confusion, something the OGBN also factors into their decisions.
So, I’ve added this to my list of OGBN proposals that I’ll someday submit when I have a moment, and when I do, I will reach out to the Hood River History Museum and U.S. Forest Service for their endorsements of the proposal, as well.
Exploring Newton Clark Country
Now that we’ve met Newton Clark and his family, the following is a short tour of the places named for him in Mount Hood country.
The Newton Clark Glacier sprawls across Mount Hood’s east face in this classic view from Elk Meadows
For Portlanders, the Newton Clark Glacier is on the dark side of the moon — it’s on the east face of the mountain, hidden from view from the rainy, evening side of the Cascade Range. But from the morning side of the mountain it’s prominent, and dominates the east face of Mount Hood.
Most who see the Newton Clark Glacier up-close view it from the crest of popular Cooper Spur, from nearby Elk Meadows or from Lookout Mountain, due east by five miles, across the East Fork valley. But some of the best views are from Gnarl Ridge, on the Timberline Trail. Here, the impressive scale of the Newton Creek canyon and the full width of the glacier are in full view. In summer, a series of tall waterfalls cascade from the glacier over the Newton Clark Prow and into Newton Canyon.
Vast Newton Canyon as seen from Gnarl Ridge, among the most awesome viewpoints on the mountain. The Newton Clark Glacier fills the east face of the mountain with the layered, black lava cliffs of the Newton Clark Prow at the base of the glacier
True to its name, Gnarl Ridge is home to hundreds of ancient, gnarled Whitebark pine that have survived the harsh conditions here for centuries. There’s no easy way to Gnarl Ridge. Both approaches, either from Cloud Cap or Hood River Meadows, involve a lot of climbing, though the scenery is some of the finest in Oregon. One advantage of the Cloud Cap approach is that no glacial stream crossings are required. However, several permanent, and potentially treacherous snowfields must be crossed on this highest section of the Timberline Trail.
The trail to Elk Meadows is among the most popular on the mountain, and deservedly so, and it provides a photogenic view of Mount Hood’s east face. This is a good family hike for a summer day, but it does require crossing Newton Creek without the aid of a footbridge — which can be an exciting experience. By mid-summer, Timberline Trail hikers have usually stitched together a seasonal crossing with available logs and stones, but expect wet feet when the water is high!
Footbridge over Clark Creek on the trail to Elk Meadows. In summer, the outflow creeks from the Newton Clark Glacier are milky with glacial till.
For a more remote experience, following the Newton Creek Trail to either Newton Creek or Clark Creek (or both) has dramatic views and a lot of rugged mountain terrain to explore. The route to the Newton Clark Trail crosses Clark Creek on a log bridge that has somehow survived this rowdy stream, then turns north and travels along Newton Creek before making a gradual climb along the northeast shoulder of the Newton Clark Moraine.
At the junction of the Newton Creek Trail with the Timberline Trail you can go right for a visit to Newton Creek or left to head over to Clark Creek. Or both, which is how I enjoy doing this hike.
Where Newton Creek canyon is vast and awesome, Clark Creek canyon has a few surprises, including lovely, verdant Heather Canyon, a side canyon with a string of splashing waterfalls.
A lone hiker climbs the east slope of Clark Canyon on the Timberline Trail. The Newton Clark Moraine is the massive, gray ridge on the right. Verdant Heather Canyon is on the left
The Clark Canyon headwall is also unique. The receding Newton Clark Glacier has left a wide, scoured rock amphitheater behind that has dozens of tiny streams running across its face in summer. To skiers, this is known as the “Super Bowl”, and it’s impressive to see close-up.
The headwaters of Clark Creek are among the most remote on the mountain, and feature dozens of glacial streams cascading steep cliffs below the Newton Clark Glacier
Downstream from the bowl, Clark Creek drops over a major waterfall (visible from the Timberline Trail) before reaching the debris-covered floor of the valley. This is where the Timberline Trail crosses Clark Creek, so if you like to avoid glacial stream crossings, it’s a nice turnaround spot for lunch. But if you don’t mind the crossing, a pretty waterfall on Heather Creek lies just a quarter mile beyond the Clark Creek crossing and makes for an especially lovely stop.
Clark Creek on a summer afternoon, heavy with glacial till during peak runoff
Heading the other direction on the Timberline Trail from the Newton Creek Trail junction quickly takes you to Newton Creek, proper. In most years, an impromptu rope helps hikers navigate a washed-out bank as you approach the chaotic canyon floor, and this is a preview of what can be one of the more difficult glacial crossings on the Timberline Trail.
Newton Canyon from the Newton Creek Trail, just below the Timberline Trail
Like Clark Creek, you can skip the crossing this glacial stream and simply enjoy a lunch atop one of the many table-sized boulders that fill Newton Canyon, with a fine view of the mountain. The Newton Clark Glacier is more prominent here, and the steep cliffs of Gnarl Ridge and Lamberson Spur rise along the far canyon wall.
The formidable crossing of Newton Creek on the Timberline Trail, one of more difficult of the many glacial stream crossings on the circuit
Newton and Clark creeks are both thick with glacial till in summer, and don’t make good water sources, but Heather Creek runs clear and there’s a tiny creek flowing into Newton Canyon where the Timberline Trail approaches the canyon floor that provides both drinking water and a couple of shady campsites.
Exploring Surveyors Ridge
Before the era of mountain biking, Surveyors Ridge Trail was a lightly used, lesser-known trail on the mountain that had originally been built for early forest travel.
Though an anonymous tribute, Surveyors Ridge is also named for Newton Clark, and it’s well worth exploring. If you’re a mountain biker, I need say no more. You’ve been there and taken in the sweeping vistas!
But if you’re a hiker, I recommend making a trip to Bald Butte, which forms the northern end of Surveyor’s Ridge. It’s known to a few as “the other Dog Mountain” for its beautiful yellow balsamroot and blue lupine meadows in May and early June each year that echo the much more popular counterpart in the Gorge. Plus, the view of Mount Hood and the upper Hood River Valley from Bald Butte are stunning.
Surveyors Ridge is named for Newton Clark, albeit anonymously. In his lifetime, few trails existed here
There are a couple of ways to get to Bald Butte. If you’re up for a stiff climb, you can take the Oak Ridge Trail (the trailhead is just south of the Hood River Ranger Station, off OR 35). This steep but scenic trail switchbacks up an open slope of Oregon white oak and spring wildflowers before entering forest and joining the Surveyors Ridge Trail. Turn left and hike a couple more miles and you’re on top of Bald Butte.
If you don’t mind driving a bit and are looking for a shorter climb, you can also take Pinemont Drive from where it intersects OR 35 (at the obvious crest between the middle and upper Hood River valleys) and follow this road for several miles to the east shoulder of Bald Butte. Watch for a gravel spur road on the right, shortly after you pass under a swath of transmission towers, and follow the spur to a trailhead under the powerlines.
The view from the trailhead is spectacular enough, but following the trail from here (which is really the old, primitive lookout road) to the summit of Bald Butte is even more sublime, passing several wildflower meadows that bloom in May and early June.
The Surveyors Ridge Trail ends at Bald Mountain, where yellow Balsamroot and blue Lupine cover the slopes in May and early June
When you make the final ascent of Bald Butte, it’s hard to ignore the impact that off-road vehicles are having on the butte. Hopefully, the Forest Service decision to close most areas in the forest to these destructive vehicles will eventually be enforced. In the meantime, there’s a bit more on the subject in this earlier blog article on the fate of Bald Butte.
For a completely different slice of the Surveyor’s Ridge Trail, you can simply ramble the section north of Shellrock Mountain, where there are several big views of the mountain, plus a look into the weird terrain of Badlands Basin, where an ancient layer of volcanic ash and debris that has been carved into fantastic shapes. You can hike to this area from the Gibson Prairie Horse Camp.
Mount Hood and Shellrock Mountain from the Surveyors Ridge Trail
The trail spur is located across the road, and if you turn left on the Surveyors Ridge Trail you’ll be heading toward views of Shellrock Mountain and Badlands Basin. Several handy boulders in the steep meadow pictured above make for a good destination for this short, easy hike. Turn right on Surveyors Ridge Trail, and you can take a shorter hike to Rimrock, where the views are somewhat overgrown, but still nice.
The 2006 Floods
Visiting the twin canyons of the Newton Clark Glacier is a great way to appreciate the raw power of the floods it has generated over the years. While Clark Creek can certainly hold its own, Newton Creek is the most fearsome stream on Mount Hood’s east side. Views along the lower section of the Newton Creek Trail (below) tell the story, with truck-sized boulders and stacks of 80-foot logs tossed about in a quarter-mile wide flood channel.
Much of the more recent devastation you see here occurred in the fall of 2006, when heavy rains fell on a blanket of early snow, and combined to send a wall of rock and mud down the canyon.
Truck-sized boulders and whole trees stacked like matchsticks are silent testimony to the power of Newton Creek in this scene several miles below the glacier, where flash floods have created a debris zone a quarter mile wide. This scene is along the lower part of the Newton Creek Trail.
The debris flow roared down to Highway 35, blocking culverts, covering the road with boulders and washing out large sections of road bed. A similar event was occurring on the White River at the same time, temporarily cutting off access to the Mount Hood Meadows resort from both east and west. As sudden and violent as this event seemed, in reality it was part of an ongoing erosional process as old as the mountain, itself.
We can see this ancient story playing out in new LIDAR imagery, a form of aerial radar used to map the earth’s surface in stunning detail, revealing landforms that could never be captured with conventional surveying. Over the past decade, the Oregon LIDAR Consortium has been working to bring this new mapping technology to a larger audience, including for the Mount Hood area. LIDAR has allowed geoscientists to map the history of faults, floodplains and landslides as never before.
The map below is from the Oregon LIDAR project, and shows how Newton and Clark creeks emerge from their narrow, twin mountain canyons to spread out on the floor of the broad East Fork Hood River valley. The valley floor is made up of loose debris deposited from these floods over the millennia, and both Newton and Clark creeks have changed course in this soft material with regularity.
Lidar imagery in recent years has unveiled a long and recurring history of big floods and shifting stream channels in the Newton Clark flood zone. The Mount Hood Loop Highway crosses dozens of these old channels where it crosses the zone.
(Click here for a larger view of the Newton Clark Flood Zone map)
You can see this history in the maze of braided channels that show up on LIDAR. Whereas topographic maps simply show a relatively flat, featureless valley floor here, LIDAR reveals hundreds of interwoven flood channels across what we now know as the Newton Clark flood zone.
Many of these channels were formed centuries ago, and some in our lifetimes. Some may have flowed for decades without much change, while others may have formed in a single event, then went dry. Both Newton and Clark creeks are continually on the move, and so long as the main steam of the East Fork is on the opposite, and downhill side the Mount Hood Loop Highway (OR 35), both streams will continue to wreak havoc on the highway.
In 2012 the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) and ODOT replaced the bridge at White River and built massive new culverts for Clark and Newton Creeks on the east side of the mountain (below).
To contend with the frequent flooding of Newton and Clark creeks, the Federal Highway Administration and ODOT built these massive flood control structures on OR 35 in 2012. They haven’t been tested by a major flood event… yet…
The following are a few photos taken after the water subsided in the fall of 2006, and ODOT crews were assessing the damage to OR 35. The damage shown here occurred over a 24-hour span.
A flash flood from the Newton Clark Glacier in the fall of 2006 sent walls of boulders and ash down the mountain, covering portions of Highway 35 in eight feet of debris (ODOT)With culverts blocked by debris during the 2006 event, Newton Creek simply flowed down OR 35 (ODOT)In this view from 2006, a raging Newton Creek simply dissolved the road bed under OR 35, leaving slabs of asphalt hanging in the air (ODOT)
So far, the new flood structures at Newton Creek have not been tested by a major flood event. But when you consider the mosaic of old stream channels in the LIDAR imagery that have been created over the centuries by hundreds of flood events, these new structures are temporary, at best. It’s only a matter of time.
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I’ve mentioned several hikes in this part of the article, and they can also be found in much more detail in the Oregon Hikers Field Guide at the links below. Enjoy!
Hood River History Museum (photo: Hood River History)
Special thanks to the Hood River History Museum for permission to include photos from their outstanding collection of historic images in this article. Like all museums, they are closed to the public until further notice because of the COVID-19 pandemic. This has an immediate impact on funding their operations, so please consider supporting the museum during this crisis with a donation. You can make one-time or ongoing monthly donations via PayPal, just go to the “donate” link on their website to support their valuable work.
And another special thanks to Oregon Hikers off-trail legend Chip Down for permission to use his photo of the Newton Clark Prow, one of the least-explored places on Mount Hood. You can read his trip report and see more of his outstanding photos of the Newton Clark backcountry over here.
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Postscript:this article was two years in the making (!), as the story of Newton Clark is told in bits and pieces in century-old sources. Despite the miracle of the internet and the astonishing information we have at our fingertips in our time, uncovering local history is still like peeling back the layers of an onion. With each new discovery, more mysteries are uncovered… and blog articles get a bit longer and a bit later!
In this spirit, please help me improve this short history of Newton and Mary Clark and their family where I’ve made errors or omissions.
Thanks for stopping by and reading this especially long entry!
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